Regardless of their still-burgeoning profile and local-hero charm, the supreme confidence of the M's has been apparent from the very beginning. From their first eponymous EP onwards, they've written simple, soaring melodies and cobbled together anthemic rock from the glam of Bowie and T. Rex, the saccharine tunes of the Kinks and later Britpop, and the alternately scrappy and surging guitars of 90s American indie. It's the band's knack for making all that seem natural and effortless that's made them worth revisiting with each release, but on their third record that confidence has manifested itself in a different way: rather than barnstorming, the M's on Real Close Ones are starting to sound aloof. They subtract elements once integral to their sound, add a few no one saw coming, and pay unhurried homage to artists they've never nodded to before. If previous records had them pulling all the cool records out for new guests, Real Close Ones is what you'd hear on your ninth or tenth visit to the M's' apartment. Congratulations; you're bros now.
Part of that aforementioned confidence surely stems from the members' time spent in earlier bands. Three-fourths of the M's originally started in psych-pop outfit Sanoponic, and those roots are beginning to make themselves heard in these 13 songs. So while "Big Sound" starts things off with the weaving urgency you'd expect from the M's, its fuzzy production and seemingly anemic low-end sounds at first like something is missing-- like a car coming down the street without a windshield. "Breakfast Score" restores the ample low-end, but they soon add violin presets that would normally only fly in the haze of modern psych-pop. It reads like it should be at odds with the band's guitar-driven rock, and it's jarring at first, but it's incorporated with the same deliciously disinterested manner as any other part of their pastiche.
The guitar tone in "Pigs Fly" has gone for days without water, but the echo on the vocals serves the yearning harmonies perfectly, and some spacey Rhodes floating over it makes for the dreamy, sun-bleached highlight of the disc. "Don't Be Late" is tentative acoustic pop that phases in and out, as if being heard across the street through mid-day traffic, and "Papers" gets smokier with gurgling bass tones, lazy drum machine beats, and backwards guitar-- all sewn together into coy, crooning pop. The guitar intro for "Get Your Shit Together" is jagged indie with serious soul, but it's merely a segue into another woozy glam rock we've come to expect from the band, with some extra honking bass and a bit of Harry Nilsson's cracked swagger. Speaking of: "Naked" could be a dead ringer for "Coconut", a self-admittedly creepy ditty about where and why nudity can happen that never raises its voice above a drunken slur.
"Ultraviolent Men" begins as careless drum-machine pop, but the chorus once again shows the band's knack for melodies that blossom from nowhere in moments of subtle surprise. "Impossible View" is a swinging rocker toting a formidable low-end, though it may get its strength simply by standing next to the album's many diversions, not to mention the impossibly annoying chorus of "Bros in Arms". After that, tracks like the largely acoustic "Tryin To Keep" or the tireless Beatles worship of "Days in the Sun" end the record on an extended and lethargic denouement. Following their first two crunching and careening albums, it may seem as if the M's have lowered the bar for themselves, but through all the detours they've made an album that sounds more like themselves than any previous work. There's more personality here than pastiche, and that bodes extremely well.
