Boy Genius: Anchorage

There’s something wounded in the sound of Boy Genius, a Brooklyn band with a knack for mid-’80s jangle-pop heroics. Perhaps it’s that skittish harmonica, or the bounding tempos, racing forward like a calf discovering the power of its own stride; maybe it’s the way Jason Korenkiewicz (a former PopMatters staffer) sings, dangling his words on short strings before cutting them loose. Bittersweet and romantically infectious, Anchorage, the band’s full-length debut, is stocked with blissed-out sing-alongs (“Radio Silence”, “Eureka”, “Failing Gravity” — dig the wink to “Bold as Love” in that one) and colored, on the edges, by trumpet, glockenspiel, and tried-and-true male/female harmonies. “I am harboring a hope / That this harbor is my home,” Korenkiewicz sings in the title track, while the band springs eternal around him — a salve for even the most broken of things.