The Law of the Playground

iTunes Review

The Boy Least Likely To’s relentlessly sunny, 2005 debut, The Best Party Ever, resulted in no small amount of buzz and British musicians Jof Owen and Pete Hobbs wisely stayed the course with The Law of the Playground, offering more of the effervescent, gleeful pop that won them such accolades in the first place. While tunes like the fiddle-and-banjo driven “Saddle Up,” and the sing-along imperative “A Balloon On A Broken String” would not sound out of place on a kids’ TV show, the gleeful bounce and radiant energy often belies more melancholy, adult themes: singer Owen sweetly croons lines like, “I know I look all shiny and bouncy, but I’m all empty inside” and “I wake up every morning feeling sad,” sentiments not exactly made for the Sesame Street crowd. Mood changers like “Whiskers,” with its marching snare drum, sad banjo, and whooshing synths, and the lonely scientist lament, “The Boy Least Likely to Is a Machine,” keep things from glazing over with twee-ness. TBLLT make clever, gleaming pop crafted with a healthy yin/yang dynamic: Think, I’m From Barcelona and Noah and the Whale, with a bit of a Jekyll/Hyde twist added to the whole affair. Bingo.