Smith Westerns - Dye It Blonde

As opening track ‘Weekend’ hits you with an irrepressible central riff, it’s immediately clear the kind of tone that ‘Dye It Blonde’, the second album from the impossibly young foursome that makes up Chicago’s Smith Westerns, is going for. With chiming synths, sunny disposition and woozy chorus, ‘Weekend’ is the montage music to the upbeat indie romance of your dreams, and that feeling of the buzz of young love never abates for the following thirty-two minutes.

With song titles like ‘Only One’, ‘Dance Away’ and even ‘Falling In Love’, this is about as teenage as it gets, and the sheer youthful exuberance of this collection of tracks complements that outlook perfectly. With the likes of ‘Imagine Pt. 3’s driving piano and cascading guitar licks or ‘Fallen In Love’s vaguely ludicrous guitar solo dominating proceedings, this was never going to be an understated look at love as concept - each new riff is basically the equivalent of buying a Valentines’ card for your new girlfriend - shallow, but it says ‘I LOVE YOU’ in great big letters, which is all you really want to say anyway. Then again, that’s not to say this is music without depth. Much of the critical focus on the band’s self-titled debut lay on their constant references to T-Rex and ‘70s glam-rock as a huge influence and, with the ultra lo-fi fuzz of that album swept away, those influences are given room to stretch over the entire recording.

Witness then, the schizophrenic majesty of ‘All Die Young’; half torchlit lament to fallen rock gods, half lighters-up celebration anthem. From its tremulous organ sound, echoing “oo”s and wonderful Fireman Sam drumbeat to usher in the second half, nothing about this song could sound more like a knowing pastiche of rock’s leopard print stage. These boys know what they’re aping too, invoking these sounds without ever letting them seem as dated as they undoubtedly are – it sounds authentic, even down to the superfluous reversed outro to ‘Still New’. Unfortunately, it’s that very commitment to the sound that lets some of the album’s lesser tracks down. ‘Smile’s own chorus-led attempt at heartfelt anthem sounds unnecessary after ‘All Die Young’, and by the end of the album, you do yearn for a bit more substance rather than style.

You could say that it’s the extreme youth of a band who are barely old enough to buy guns in their homeland, never mind drink, that’s led to an album both affirmed and disjointed by its commitment to bombastic arrangements of the kind of music they’re still growing up to. Then again, an older, more cynical, band might never have made this album at all, let alone better. ‘Dye It Blonde’ certainly isn’t perfect, but in their youthful, simple approach, Smith Westerns are living Marc Bolan’s lost teenage dream, and letting all us oldies in on the fun again.