Thee Makeout Party Are Alright

A grin spreads beneath bassist Lee's oversized-old-lady glasses as he bashfully utters, "Hi, we're Thee Makeout Party, and we're from Disneyland California," and four guys that look like a discarded Hana-Barbera sketch somehow come to life start playing cutting power pop.

I have seen these guys play in horrible bars in Anaheim and horrible bars in Brooklyn and horrible punk houses and not-so-horrible galleries; no matter where I am, by the time their set is over, I feel like I am on the beach in 1972 wearing skippies, drinking soda pop, without a care in the world except dancing until my legs give out. This is a band of guys who are on tour with a band that has just graduated high school (Audacity). They will drive off into the night with your friends in a weed-filled cargo van, take them to visit farm animals, and return them intact, happy, (although in a different county) the next day. They will be dragged to house parties in Crown Heights and when offered a place to crash, will ask if they can sleep on the roof and if there are drugs anywhere. I suppose this is my roundabout way of saying that I really like this band and their debut LP, Let's Pretend, released by Recess Records on vinyl and by Teenacide on CD.

Let's Pretend is a beautiful display of coming to terms with never quite coming to terms with anything. It's refreshing to hear power pop songs that don't launch from one riff to another or from chorus to refrain with the pronouncement that seems to be associated with many contemporary bands. The songs Thee Makeout Party play call to ear the delicate balance between pop music and dark feelings captured in songs like The Shoes "I Don't Miss You", the gleeful, biting revulsion in The Soft Boys "I Wanna Destroy You" and the plaintive ache in The Shivvers "No Substitute". The album, like the title track, is a wreckless epic of catchy well-crafted songs that embrace the idea that happiest place on earth isn't on the other end of a turnstile. Happiness exists only in fleeting moments and sometimes we are lucky enough to find something like this record that we can escape into over and over.