Travis Johnson and Emily Ambruso of Brooklyn's Grooms met on long-passé social networking site Friendster, according to a label bio. Please, don't hold that against them. The band's genesis may be purely millennial, but its music is firmly situated in the 1990s. Grooms' 2009 debut, Rejoicer, slightly recalls the shambling rawness of early Modest Mouse; for the follow-up, Prom, Grooms dive headlong into the sweeping erotic confusion that permeated the dreamier sphere of 90s alt-rock. They aren't the only band making such a maneuver this year (see: Being Pure at Heart, the Pains of), but Grooms' aims give off a whiff of vague danger, a static unease occasionally broken by detuned guitars and skins-smashing breakdowns.
Travis Johnson's swinging, strung-out pipes dominate here, though bassist Emily Ambruso somewhat ill-advisedly takes the mic on the short breakup blast "Sharing", which sounds quite a bit like fellow New York shoegaze fetishists Asobi Seksu. Like that band, Grooms have little relation to the Brooklyn scene's recent shift away from hazy, distanced rock toward synths and new age tropes. Although Prom does occasionally dip into the well of perpetually vogue, vague nostalgia ("17 is the whole world/ In my room/ The Smiths, and girls"), the album is especially close-focus when compared to a few of the band's regional peers. When Grooms hit the sticky, slack-jawed realities of album highlights "Expression of" and "Skating With Girl", they rank among the few guitar-indie bands so unafraid to match intimacy with clarity.
Unlike another of those bands, Deerhunter, Grooms are still a ways away from managing to carve out an identity through tons of obsessive record-collection re-creation. That's especially true on "Into the Arms", where Johnson barks in a way that's almost distractingly like Les Savy Fav's Tim Harrington. The rest of the band doesn't have the muscle to match up with that sort of brawn (really, who does besides LSF?); despite Grooms' excellent ability to resemble many other bands without necessarily ripping them off, the track is a reminder that, well, not everything is a perfect fit.
