Top 20 Releases of 2012: No.16 – Boyish – Summer Dream

I was a little bit cynical about this self-produced, self-released CD/R when it came out last spring, but for all its youthful fixation on the past and despite the bugbear I have about the way so many indiepop vocalists insist on adopting this vague, disaffected murmur instead of, you know, singing properly, just on the strength of tunes alone, Summer Dream is an outstanding album, especially for those, like me, who share a mild obsession with bands like The Close Lobsters.

Because the vocals are buried, shoegaze-style, beneath a duvet of semi-conscious cotton wool haze, he real pleasure of listening to Summer Dream comes from the moments where the big, chiming guitar riffs jump in, all shimmering, spine-tingling reverb, and kick the song up a gear. Summer Dream is a defiantly lo-fi release, and you suspect that the band are happy for things to stay that way, but like Teen Runnings (ex. Friends), to whom Boyish almost certainly owe a debt of influence (and whose debut album was re-released in a slightly cleaned-up form last August), it wouldn’t take much extra work to make these songs into something much more strident, confident-sounding and pop.