After discovering that Afternoon Naps had signed to Athens-based label Happy Happy Birthday To Me last year, I had been quietly awaiting the follow-up to their completely overlooked debut Sunbeamed. It definitely took a while, but completely unbeknownst to me, the new record titled Parade was released last month.
As I started to listen to Parade, I figured I had the entire album pegged after the first two tracks “Plum City Fight Song” and “Beach Bum” which were as expected — the same style of simple, summery pop tunes from Sunbeamed that the band themselves described simply as “Verse-Chorus-Verse-Chorus…End!”.
I would’ve been completely content with the entire record following this same path, but from the third or fourth track onward I noticed a different layer, a new wrinkle, to the rest of the album that I had not expected. I’m not sure how to describe it exactly, but imagine a band like The Clientele suddenly going indiepop, but still retaining that kind of laid-back atmosphere. I could be completely wrong in that description, but it could be just that the band’s sound is just so much more polished this time around.
Still at its heart, these songs are simple and straight to the point pop, while being catchy enough to not be forgettable in the slightest.
MP3: Afternoon Naps :: “The Fall Companion”
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