Lovely

One of the best pop songs of the '80s, The Primitives' “Crash” (later remixed for the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack), leads an album full of similarly heady pop moments (“Spacehead,” “Way Behind Me,” “Buzz Buzz Buzz”), suitably ethereal shoegaze (“Thru the Flowers,” “Stop Killing Me”), ’60s throwbacks (“Out of Reach”), and even memorable nods to the psych-era Beatles (“Shadow”) and early Blondie (“Nothing Left”). So, yeah, it’s easy to see how this U.K. band (fronted by the beautiful, effervescent singer Tracy Cattell) have been compared to The Sundays or Jesus & Mary Chain or My Bloody Valentine. But don’t hold any of that against them. There’s something persuasive about Cattell’s breathy delivery and sugary melodies, about her deceptively innocent voice happily singing refrains of “nah nah nah” in a tune about a lover careening out of control. There’s something about her old-school Hollywood starlet blonde coif and Nancy Sinatra carriage. And there’s something irresistible about guitarist Paul Court’s distorted riffs and jingle jangle. That kind of instant nostalgia pumps through all of The Primitives' music.