Little Big League: These Are Good People

This collection combines post-punk’s brittle immediacy with The Sundays’ romantic gloom. Maybe if The Sundays’ Blind had bothered with, you know, a few tunes and, say, Built To Spill had got even more dischord going on, then with that combination you’d have These Are Good People.

Singer Michelle Zauner has similar vocal gymnastics to Inna Mkrtycheva of the (too short-lived) Sweet Bulbs, a band with whom Little Big League share an enthralling sonic intemperance.

Like Fear Of Men, their closest contemporaries, they have a folkloric fascination and mystery, and a smart way of containing howling sexual anguish in the restraints of instantly accessible pop songs. Check Summer Wounds, for instance:

For the love of God, someone get this girl to shut up
Or else I’m leaving, I swear I’m leaving
Oh don’t you want me to stay
Like a summer dress on a wire hanger

I can not get off when you're always trying to talk
I lose the feeling, I'm lost

Or Sportswriting, which opens with "Tell me do you like to give or receive/Or do you like it better on hands and knees". Just listen to the tension building and its release in 6 glorious minutes:



Fuck it, play the whole album and then buy it.