All of Something

Sports recorded a debut album last year, when they were still students at bucolic Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. Since graduation earlier this year, they’ve gone their separate ways — but their second album still evokes the extremely charming sound of late senior year, enjoying the hilariously cheap off-campus rents and letting it all hang out on the songs you knock out between trips to the bar. All of Something is full of smart, sweetly slashing indie-rock that recalls peers like Swearin’ and Waxahatchee, with wonderful tunes about wasting anxious hours on nervous boys, “biting my nails and biting your tongue.” “Stunted” opens like an ace Liz Phair impression, then reveals a flavor of worried drama all its own, clearing the space for breakneck shots of thrift-shop power-pop like “GDP” and “Saturday” — songs that blaze a breadcrumb trail from the couch to the kitchen.

These guys certainly come off like the kind of early-twenties dreamers who can turn laundry day into a Sartre play (see “Clean Socks”). In real life, one is off to med school and another is a teacher. Despite the halo of stay-golden stasis that hangs above their music, singer-guitarist Carmen Perry, who’s blessed with some country sass in her parched yelp, knows how to get hers with just the right shade of ambivalence: “Take my mind off the empty space in this heart of mine and I’ll take your mind off the empty space in your bed tonight,” she sings on the standout “Reality TV.”  If the band can’t find the time to get together and make another record, she’ll be one to keep an eye on. Grab your mid-twenties by the horns, kid.