Magic Kids – Memphis
True Panther Sounds: 2010
If there’s ever an award for “Most Ill-Fitting Album Title of 2010,” don’t give it to Drake for the arrogantly-titled Thank Me Later, however tempting it may be to condemn the rapper for his sub-par debut. Instead, give the award to Magic Kids and their Beach Boys-flavored debut album, Memphis. Memphis?! Granted this effervescent quintet hails from the album’s namesake, but being from Tennessee myself, I can confirm that Memphis is a sprawling urban city in a landlocked state. Don’t let anyone tell you that we have beaches in Tennessee, because it simply isn’t true. Despite this nugget of geographical trivia, on Memphis, Magic Kids are hell-bent on making you believe that adolescent summers in Memphis were spent packing up and heading to the beach every afternoon.
All joking aside, Magic Kids are yet another band to jump into a metaphorical Little Deuce Coupe and ride off into a 1963 California sunset. Memphis is not evocative of the bluesy city of Memphis, but rather the beaches of the West Coast, and it’s yet another example of indie rockers going for that ‘60s twee-pop sound. It would be too easy to compare Magic Kids’ Memphis to Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, but the similarities are all too persistent and ever-present to ignore. As on Pet Sounds, there’s an overarching theme of innocence and early adolescence, recalling a time of all play and no work. The vocalists coo middle school love letter lyrics such as, “There’s no candy sweeter than my baby,” in a call-and-response fashion on “Candy”. Furthermore, lush orchestral arrangements give life to the album’s 11 songs, painting a multilayered portrait of yesteryear. The glee club-friendly “Hey Boy” opens up with a children’s choir, singing, “Hey boy, where’s your girlfriend?/She needs your attention,” and it suddenly launches into cheery piano keys with the vocalist describing his relationship with his “girl” as “steady.” The best example of the obvious Pet Sounds copycatting is the album’s closing track “Cry with Me Baby”, a song with a rollicking ‘60s rhythm, layered falsetto vocals, and strings aplenty. These guys must believe the 1960s was the greatest decade in history—or at least the greatest time in music.
Listening to Memphis, you begin to feel your own outlook shift to something so unfathomably positive, making you feel twelve years old again and fancy-free. Then the sun dives behind some ominous clouds, and rain threatens to totally ruin your far-out beach trip. The album never strays from the play-all-day-in-the-sun pop formula, quickly making the songs monotonous, and then you realize, “Hey! Those arrangements are thinner and more lifeless than I previously thought,” and, “Hey! This vocalist isn’t Brian Wilson at all. His falsetto is plain, and his vocal melodies, boring.” Memphis starts to sound worse than all the albums it imitates. After feeling incredibly let down, you might even ask yourself, “Haven’t music fans had enough of this bubblegum tripe?”
There has to be a collective resistance to this Xeroxing trend, or else it’s going to be like that oblivious house guest who refuses to leave. Complaints about ‘60s throwbacks in indie rock sound just as stale by now, certainly, but that’s because all of the homage-paying and ripping off within the indie music macrocosm sounds equally stale. To the band’s credit, Memphis spends 28 minutes delivering candy-coated, sunny pop music, and it’s an impressive debut from a technical standpoint (most new bands wouldn’t dare throw strings and brass into the mix). But if Magic Kids hope to stick around and be remembered, they must find their own identity in this maddeningly homogeneous scene.
2.5 out of 5
