Green Vinyl
San Fran's sprighliest come bounding back into view with a second album of highly spirited indiepop majesty that represents a significant upgrade on their already primo songwriting. There's a not insignificant superstar quality to the way The Umbrellas carry themselves - the hair; the styling; the girl-boy vocal trade off of the soaring live shows - and with it the sense of a markedly high ceiling, the poster children of the new Bay Area scene. Fairweather Friend delivers wholesale on that promise, a marriage of astute influences (Orange Juice, Beat Happening, The Pastels, Shop Assistants, Tiger Trap) and committed and convincing performance: guitars that chime and bounce, drums that race forward as if in fear of the song beating them to the end, lyrics that map that eternal intersecting territory of the melancholic and the joyous, real high grade dancing-with-a-broken-heart desire all up on show. Slumberland have twinned with Tough Love to handle the US side of the release, and if there's any band The Umbrellas remind me of from that label's rich 30 year history it's The Pains of Being Pure At Heart. A 21st Century redux repro of indiepop bliss so well conceived they immediately attain classic status. In a just world, fame would be assured. Since we know the world is rarely just and nothing is assured, we'll simply have to settle for the being the current brightest star in the sky. We'll have to go some year to find a better example of its type.
