Ex Cops are a curious signing for Manhattan record store Other Music's new label. Where the shop has developed an international reputation for its expertly curated selection of obscure psychedelia, electronica, cult hero reissues, and other esoterica from around the world, Ex Cops are as traditional an indie-pop act as they come; one that, in the past month alone, has issued faithful covers of both a Paul McCartney holiday standard and a classic Replacements video. But as you delve into the band's debut, True Hallucinations, the alliance with Other Music starts to make more sense: Ex Cops approach their music as if they were friendly record-store clerks, using a familiar sound as a starting point before digging further back and helping you connect the dots to what came before it.
For the duo of Brian Harding and Amalie Bruun, home is found at the dream pop end of the indie rock spectrum, in the form recently re-popularized by fellow east coasters Wild Nothing, DIIV, and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart. You wouldn't know it from True Hallucinations' opening, "S&HSXX," a dark, synth-powered instrumental set to a rhythm track sampled from Genesis' mid-'80s hit, "Mama", that gets the album off to an incongruously icy, ominous beginning. But before long, the sugar-rush swoon of "Ken" and "James" provide an instant realignment of Ex Cops' aims, with boy/girl harmonies that waft in like a coastal breeze, and shimmering, jangling guitars that cast the songs' wide-eyed energy in a soft-focus blur. It's a mode that Ex Cops execute very well-- on first pass, there's little to immediately distinguish them from the myriad other bands carved from the late-80s Creation Records mould, but Harding and Bruun aren't shy about wielding their hooks, and pack a considerable amount of dynamic variation into a limited range.
Ex Cops become a more interesting, impressive band once they start straying further afield, however, tracing dream pop's evolution through the euphoric, pulse-quickening highs of Feels-era Animal Collective ("Billy Pressly"), the laser-guided Spiritualized sax surges of "Jazz & Information", the locomotive Flying Nun-worthy whirr of "Broken Chinese Chairz", and the vintage 4AD flashback that is "Separator". (When the latter's beautifully melancholic riff cuts out during the second verse, leaving Harding and Bruun's airy sighs to hang above a brooding bassline, you get a sense of what the Pixies' "Monkey Gone to Heaven" might sound like through the space-bound simian's ears.) Meanwhile, the knowingly titled "Nico Beast" takes us back to where this strung-out strain of rock 'n' roll all began-- i.e., the corner of Lexington and 125.
However, more than merely showcase Harding and Bruun's well-cultivated record collections, True Hallucinations is a testament to the duo's unfailingly snappy songcraft and how naturally it can adapt to different forms and settings; even the album's most languorous moment, the moonstruck ballad "The Millionaire", feels brisk and engaging, thanks to its wonderfully dazed central melody. Dream pop is an easy formula to replicate-- emit a breathy, androgynous coo; step on tremolo pedal-- but it's an awfully hard one to keep fresh, and remain on the right side of the line that separates blissful reverie and insomnia balm. Acid-trip allusions aside, True Hallucinations is ultimately a triumph of focus and discipline.
