With the deaths of Big Star's Alex Chilton and Andy Hummel, it's been a bad year for fans of Seventies power pop. Some small good news: this taut 10-song debut. Leader Josh Lattanzi has played with Fountains of Wayne's Adam Schlesinger and toured with the Lemonheads' Evan Dando, and he can be fairly judged by the company he keeps. Tunefulness is the order of the day, and while the line between "classic" and "cliché" occasionally feels thin — "Man, I hate this town/Livin' here has got me down," he declares on the title track — the melodies, harmonies and hooks are so assured, it's easier to sing along than to quibble.

“Too Close”

Next was formed in Minneapolis when the uncle of Terry "T-Low" and Raphael "Tweety" Brown, who was a gospel choir director, introduced the brothers to Robert Lavelle "R.L." Huggar. Sounds of Blackness singer Ann Nesby groomed the R&B group before handing them over to Naughty by Nature's KayGee, who wrote and produced "Too Close." The idea for the song was sparked "from a conversation we had with several girls at a nightclub," explained T-Low. "It's talking about the club scene, with guys getting out of hand and the female telling him to back up, asking, 'What are you doing?'"