On their sophomore full-length, San Francisco's Magic Bullets take careful, well positioned steps to revive a sound that marries early 1980s UK guitar pop and 90s college rock. That specific band names will come to mind when discussing Magic Bullets is unavoidable: The Smiths and Orange Juice are obvious, as are the nods to the sunnier elements of twee.
Since these sounds tend to inspire fierce allegiance, referencing them so overtly is risky. And with Magic Bullets, you have to take into account just how close to home some of this stuff hits. Though much of the guitar work here owes at least something to Johnny Marr, it becomes troubling when some of the licks seem practically copied and pasted. At one point, "Pretend & Descend" hijacks a riff from "Bigmouth Strikes Again" with such blatant disregard, it almost feels as if it should be listed with an asterisk. And even if lead singer Philip Benson shares few vocal similarities with the likes of Morrissey or Robert Smith, he's not above taking time during the more solemn moments on the album to pout like them.
But Magic Bullets get over by being anything but a bunch of miserablists. In this sense, they take a higher road, trying to write honest-to-god pop tunes that work independent of borrowed style. So while they do adopt a sound, they mostly leave the pose behind. You'd expect a song titled "Sigh the Day Away" to feel derivatively cheeky when peppered with earnestly-spun lyrics like, "It wouldn't hurt you to smile, why not try it out for a while?" But these aren't songs in ironic disguises. Lacking the maddened melodrama and cleverness that bands like Wild Beasts subscribe to, Magic Bullets come off like straight shooters, keeping things fresh, unassuming, and unlabored.
At times here, you get a sense of a restless need to broaden the band's appeal, so that some tracks to come off as too ebullient or sugary. But these impulses are balanced with classic sounds and structures that feel balmy, wide-eyed, and genuine. We'll see if Magic Bullets eventually emerge from the shadow of their influences, but for now, it's difficult to fault these guys when the music sounds good and the gestures seem sincere.
