Dress Like Your Idols

Dress Like Your Idols

One look at the ... funtastic! ... artwork for Dress Like Your Idols, and you get what Boat is all about. With albums by bands like Pavement, Built to Spill, The Ramones, and other presumed idols riffed on, you know this Seattle band doesn’t take things too seriously but does appreciate its musical heritage. The group has consistently turned out smart (if somewhat uneven) records that balance cleverness with solid rock punch, and Dress Like Your Idols is its best yet. It's got hooks in all the right places (the chorus of “Bite My Lips” is an aural tattoo, “Forever in Armitron” is all quasi-new wave stickiness). There are reverent nods to some of the aforementioned inspirations (“Kinda Scared” and “Changing of the Guard” clearly carry some Pavement DNA; “King Kong” could be Boat and Built to Spill’s love child). Boat continues to surprise, too, with a bit of New Zealand sway on “Noises in the Night” and an enticing 47-second treat called “L-O-V-E” that begs for another 90 seconds. A plethora of indie pop innovators are entrenched here, intentionally or not, making Dress Like Your Idols a solid treat.

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