Alison Statton's name may not ring a bell. Young Marble Giants' really should. Statton sang, with gentle understatement, in that beloved, recently reissued Welsh post-punk group, but she doesn't bear any obvious relation to the album titled after her. Just this: Pants Yell! deal in gentle understatement, too. And on their fourth album, the Boston indie pop trio do so in a way that might even convince you to give that silly exclamation point one more stupid chance.
Young Marble Giants' empty space came as a rebuke to every band that ever turned it up to 11, but Alison Stratton's rebellion is subtler than quiet vs. loud. For one thing, although undeniably twee (they've covered Jens Lekman), Pants Yell! aren't afraid of a big sound. New drummer Casey Keenan, who joins founding members Andrew Churchman and Sterling Bryant via Boston psych-rock group Major Stars, powers up the rhythm section considerably, his energetic fills driving the songs forward. Nor is Alison Stratton shy about feedback, letting the scraggly noise that Pavement learned from the Clean tatter the edges of their fey boy-girl harmonies on "A New City Life", or grind the glockenspiel-chiming "The Royal We" to a screechy halt. One-minute, 17-second "Shoreham Kent" even nicks the tom-bashing instrumental hook from the Cure's "Boys Don't Cry".
Pants Yell!'s revolt isn't in declining to overpower with volume. It's in rejecting the grandiose. Churchman, who sings in the shy tenor of an American Stuart Murdoch, writes sweetly melancholy songs, as unprepossessing as growing up in the suburbs. Relationships die slowly, youth gets a bittersweet smell-ya-later. At its catchiest, Alison Statton comes close to the wry, wistful jangle of the Lucksmiths. See outsider's anthem "Reject, Reject", or the horn-backed "Magenta and Green" and "Trying to Be Good"-- that last title really belongs on an indie-pop book (Would-Be-Goods would get their own chapter). "For Dee" is slow, stripped-down, and heartbreaking: "I'll take all my goodbyes back/ If you give all your I-love-yous/ Waste 'em on anyone you choose."
"I'd rather be a singer than a one-man band," Churchman sings on the title track. He isn't alone: For all the talk about the halcyon days of Postcard, Rough Trade, and Sarah Records in the UK, or K Records and Slumberland in the U.S., there's still a thriving indie pop underground today (and not just in Sweden), with its own gatherings, message boards, blogs. Some of the bands can be too gentle, understated, or, given the participatory culture, sometimes amateurish for their own good. Pants Yell! are a part of that community, and Alison Statton shows them maturing into one of its better ambassadors. Not the kind of ambassador that's all grandiose-like though.
