The Spinto Band had the portfolio of power pop lifers before they had ever made a widely available album. When 2005's wry, multi-hued, and remarkably enduring Nice and Nicely Done came out via Bar/None, the Delaware band had already released at least a half-dozen records on their own Spintonic label. N**ice and Nicely Done's dulcet "Oh Mandy" won the group a Sears commercial that allowed them to fund a European tour, and had highlights like "Did I Tell You" and "Trust vs Mistrust" to spare, but the 2008 follow-up Moonwink felt like a case of production outpacing the quality of the songwriting, which was markedly less accessible. However, last year's hyperkinetic Shy Pursuit was a more balanced affair; you didn't have to follow the literal meaning of the blithely careening "Keep Them Alive" or crunching new-wave anthem "Take It" to enjoy the chase. With its color wheel-spinning palette, sticky, curlicued melodies, and poignant lyrical reflections, Cool Cocoon is an occasionally breathtaking highwire walk between craft and genuine feeling that builds confidently on its predecessor.
For a start, they've left the tunes more room to breathe: See the strummy, piano-based "What I Love", where intricate strings and percussion leave enough room for a sense of floating-on-air giddiness that usually goes hand-in-hand with new romance. The clappy "She Don't Want Me" conjures a more lucid Animal Collective, and comes closest to The Shy Pursuit's breakneck ebullience. But even the more cryptic moments, such as love-your-enemies swooner "Enemy", have singalong choruses and impeccable arrangements to rival fellow indie-leaning power-poppers such as the New Pornographers.
Almost 17 years after they originally formed, the Spinto Band seem to be examining their relationship with music, as well as other people, on Cool Cocoon. "Amy + Jen" is a thoughtful if pointed response to a newfound duo prepping their first cassette; the Badfinger-saluting opener "Shake it Off", where the narrator is "unhappy with dreaming," could as easily be about giving up on a band as a lover. Thankfully, Cool Cocoon stops short of getting lost in its own head: Another standout, the practically-power ballad "Memo", directly criticizes how we "over-intellectualize," with the chorus' subtle shift from "you don't feel any better" to "you don't feel" hammering the point home.
The Spinto Band can sound like Paul McCartney disciple Emitt Rhodes one second, pop-polymath newcomers Foxygen the next. Their perpetual underdog, self-releasing ways bring to mind lo-fi godhead R. Stevie Moore, fictional pop self-mythologizer Nik Worth from Dana Spiotta's great 2011 novel Stone Arabia, or any number of overlooked indie rock lifers in mid-size cities nationwide. They've firmly established their canon over the past two decades, and they're edging ever closer to deserving a place within it-- even if they don't necessarily believe it themselves. On the clanging, penultimate track "Na Na Na", a vocal melody rises like a balloon filling with a helium, and heralds the line, "Believe me, no one in history will ever sit there thinking/ Whatever did become of us?" You never know, though. The title might imply a sense of transformation, but Cool Cocoon reveals a band convincingly growing into what it had longed to be all along.
