Despite the group name, The Boys With The Perpetual Nervousness exude a lot of confidence in their sophomore effort Songs From Another Life. These guys are one of the more unique band arrangements I’ve heard of through my years of being a music fan, as both are operating long distance from Spain and Scotland – becoming a social distancing band before it was mandatory to do so. Yet everything gels so seamlessly with their music. The band crafts sweet, jangly power-pop music like the Beach Boys never left. It was as if they were just wallowing away in Neverland and came back as this new band when they felt like it.
Jokes and wild imaginations aside, what makes The Boys so special is how their sound feels like 60’s rock superimposed to the modern time. It’s like they skipped listening to Weezer and never even looked at the distortion pedal. Relying on clean guitars and even cleaner harmonies to craft an idealized iteration of pop rock. Even their highly saturated cover art exhibits the classic feel, with its colors seemingly taken straight from a bubblegum packet sold half a decade ago.
Opening song “I Don’t Mind” has the optimism that nothing can go wrong, with layers of vocals melding with the lush riffs and bright tambourine. Even their song titles evoke a nostalgic feel. “Rose Tinted Glass” sounds exactly as the title suggests. It’s a feel-good song that you instinctively want to latch on to with an apprehension that it might suddenly disappear if you don’t hold on tightly. In this very same way, the songs can be bittersweet without exerting much effort, using only the tenderness and innocence of this classic sound to do all the heavy lifting.
Other highlights include the centerpiece “Summer” which, with its bright-eyed riffs and punchy drums can make you feel like you’re out on a sweltering game of beach volleyball. “Waking Up The Sunshine” follows-up with a warm yet heavy-hearted feeling, carrying with it a wish that everything continues on to be light and breezy. We all know that this isn’t gonna last forever, but by damn do we want the feeling to never end.
Overall, Songs From Another Life has great pop songwriting from start to finish, with a sound modeled after the best of the best. Its title may suggest itself as merely a fantasy, but it’s definitely enough to tide you over the humps and setbacks of these troublesome times.