NRVS LVRS – ‘The Golden West’ (album stream) (premiere)

So we pronounce it “nervous lovers” then, right?

This latest addition to search-optimized indie band names (right up there with CHVRCHES and Alvvays) San Francisco band NRVS LVRS provide an aptly contemporary twist on indie pop. At its root is the same new romantic-derived sounds Stars have been excelling at for the past 15 years, but with smart additions of chillwave, electropop, and dreampop. The tactic works especially well on their debut album, which can be streamed in its entirety below in advance of its 8 September release date.

“A while ago, I came across the Tom Waits quote, ‘I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things’,” says band member Andrew Gomez, “and I’ve tried to use that as a roadmap for just about every song I write. Writing purely political screeds set to music is going to turn off most people, so the trick is making complicated issues personal in a tight pop format.

“This particular album reflects our experience of living in San Francisco, a city whose income inequality is the second worst in the United States, and there are a lot of terrible things happening here. Frankly, it has worn on us. And, really, what can we do? We thank our lucky stars for rent control, hope we don’t get evicted (as has already happened to two of us), and write pissed off pop songs about what we’re seeing. Surprisingly, it was a fun challenge to see how much anger and disgust we could squeeze into a pop song before it became heavy-handed.”