Our Love Will Change the World

Album Review

After the expansive The Book of Spectral Projections and Supernatural Equinox, Outrageous Cherry offer a lean, distilled version of their psych-pop on Our Love Will Change the World. Though the band can trip the psych fantastic just as ably as any band on — or influenced by — the Nuggets collections, Matthew Smith is a pop craftsman par excellence, and this album plays to his strengths: memorable melodies, clever hooks, and witty, thought-provoking lyrics. Though the hazy, sunlit beauty of "The Unchanging Frequency" and "You're a Reflection of Infinite Chaos"' fuzzed-out chug show that the band haven't forsaken their trippy side, this part of their sound plays a supporting role on flawless pop songs such as the punchy, sharp-edged "Unless." And while Outrageous Cherry is one of a handful of groups drawing on '60s inspirations that makes music that is usually more fun to actually listen to — instead of just play dissect-the-influences with — charting the exact amount of Petula Clark brassiness and Velvet Underground cool in "Pretty Girls Go Insane" is still good for a few music-snob kicks. Despite the album's wide-eyed title, Our Love Will Change the World is actually fairly moody, with Smith and company taking difficult girlfriends ("[You're Not] A Nice Girl" and "Trouble Girl," one of Smith's best songs in this vein since "Pale Frail Lovely One") and the fake and trendy ("What Have You Invented Today?") to task. Even the seemingly gentle ballad "You've Been Unkind" holds barbed lyrics like "playin' the saint that you ain't with each new coat of paint." The album's more cheerful moments are idealistic and realistic at the same time; "Our Love Will Change the World" itself is sweetly subversive, acknowledging that even good changes have a cost: "You may not like it now/But you'll get used to it somehow." "Why Don't We Talk About Something Else" is as much of a clever pop gem as it was on the Why Don't We Talk About Something Else EP, and "Calling" closes the album with timelessly jangly indie pop. Our Love Will Change the World is yet another strong release from Outrageous Cherry, and one that will especially please fans of the band's debut album and Out There in the Dark.