Jacuzzi Boys, Glazin’

I can’t deny it, no matter how hard the cold, dark parts of my soul want me to: with Glazin’, Jacuzzi Boys have thrown together one of the flat-out cheerful-est things I’ve heard in recent years, and yeah, it’s fun. There’s a great, great youthful energy to this whole album, without a downcast moment anywhere on here, and sometimes that’s a truly awesome thing, even to an aging curmudgeon like me.

The band gleefully dances down the line between tuneful garage-rock and straight-up British power-pop throughout, mashing chunks of Nick Lowe-sounding melody together with a Ramones-y snarl and a dose of psych-tinged fuzz guitar, and the Boys make it all sound new somehow, like they just stumbled onto this thing and are doing it because it’s the only sound that’d come out of their heads, hands, and mouths.

At just 30 minutes, Glazin’ is a speeding, head-shaking blast of sugar shock-inducing goodness, typified by the title track, which damn near makes up for its goofy-ass name (and chorus, and album title) by dumping a whole pitcher full of syrupy sweetness over the whole thing. “Automatic Jail” barrels along nicely, as does “Cool Vapors,” on the more garage-y end of things — either track could nearly be a Something Fierce song, honestly.

The band veers psych-ward for “Silver Sphere (Death Dream),” briefly going sludgy and dark before bouncing right back into the swaggering “Zeppelin.” Think a less-heavy, sweeter Subways, and you’ll be right some of the time (like on the lovesick-yet-hopeful “Crush,” too). The same goes for hazy contemporaries (and fellow Floridians) Surfer Blood, who seem to share the band’s just-fuzzy-enough, sun-soaked aesthetic, but then there’s the main riff of “Los Angeles,” which betrays the band’s further-back roots in its resemblance to The Kinks’ “Destroyer.”

The resemblance that really hits me the most, though, is to the sadly-overshadowed players in Art Brut (the ones who don’t happen to be frontman Eddie Argos); both bands quite obviously worship and adore blazing through these poppy, cheekily-grinning, head-nodding songs that pay homage to all those late ’70s power-pop icons, and when they hit the mark — as both AB and Jacuzzi Boys do, more often than not — they make music that’s effortlessly catchy and buoyant.

(Feature photo by Ivan Santiago.)