From the Lazy Lions album When Dreaming Lets You Down...

I Don't Think It's Going To Stop

February

Lazy Lions channel the influence of '80s power pop/new wave wonders into something tough-but-tuneful for today. They have been known to cover Squeeze and Split Enz at their shows, and they abjure attitude in favor of honest intensity and earworm hooks. Cool cred seems like a long shot for this lot once you start adding up the stats. Frontman Jim Allen has been compared to such chronic cult figures as Graham Parker and Mark Eitzel; guitarist Robert Sorkin started his musical career as a professional French horn player (he hits the horn a couple of times here too); bassist Anne-Marie Stehn bears a deep, abiding passion for Abba and Wings, and drummer Sean McMorris is no beat-happy brute but a crafty composer who studied at Berklee College of Music and cowrote several cuts on this album.

Though When Dreaming Lets You Down... is the New York quartet's debut album, it didn't exactly arise from a tabula rasa. The band members have all been around the block enough to have plenty of past lives in their collective resume. Besides Sorkin's stint with the Monterrey Symphony, Allen recorded and toured as a solo singer/songwriter, Stehn served time with major-label bound distaff rockers Antigone Rising, and McMorris manned the kit for legendary Television axeman Richard Lloyd as well as cutting his own material. But when they come together as Lazy Lions on When Dreaming Lets You Down... this foursome foments a singular spirit that encompasses all their influences and adds something new to the mix. "I Don't Think It's Going to Stop" moves like early Elvis Costello on a '60s British Invasion kick. "Let the Bad Times Roll" evokes a sort of sonic grudge match between The Police and The Smithereens. "Tiny Little Cracks" seems to wonder what would happen if Morrissey had fronted Crowded House. And the atmospheric "Creep Across the Night" suggests a collision course between The Church and a hung-over Chris Isaak. But playing Spot the Influence doesn't negate the impact of Lazy Lions' own aural identity. When dreaming lets you down… overflows with sabertooth-sharp lyrical incisions and more hooks than a bait-and-tackle shop.

Every song on the band's first full-length release stands tall on its own, but together they gather even more momentum, snowballing for an intensified impact bolstered by its own internal logic. It's all part of an endangered process that musicians of another era used to refer to as making an album, not just a bunch of random tracks wandering incoherently around your iPhone. When Dreaming Lets You Down... is a complete experience in and of itself that commands your concentration from beginning to end but rewards that attention with sonic surprises at every turn.

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