Austin Sound

The Bubbles’ debut album, Super Psychedelic Sound Explosion, practically oozes with the glee of a bunch of young musicians discovering how much fun rock and roll can be. Wearing their indie rock influences and hearts unabashedly on their sleeves, The Bubbles’ guitars shimmer, vocals are purposefully fuzzed out with just the right amount of distortion, and drums gallop at just the right pace to make heads and toes bop along to every song.

“Late Long Night” is a microcosm for the entire album: opening with some hand claps and William Glosup’s Jeff Tweedy meets Julian Casablancas singing, the song happily explodes behind the guitars and ringing cymbals just before wrapping things up perfectly without getting self indulgent or serious. While all the obvious influences are here – Pavement, The Beach Boys, Yo La Tengo, etc – The Bubbles tunes never sound ham fisted and forced. On “Right As Rain” and “Finale” (surprise! it’s the last track of the album!), the band changes things up just a bit, ditching vocals completely except for some cascading “ohs” and “ahs” and delightfully letting Glosup and Chris Balcom show their guitar chops.

The sweetest treat on the album, a song that demands repeated listens, is the cleverly titled “Lullabye”. With a gently crooned lead vocal, a wall of backing vocals, and a perfect little riff, Glosup sounds older and wiser than his years as he asks “I wonder to myself/ is life how it seems/ do we only exist/ as a memory”. Then the bass and drums kick in the door, the guitars become circular saws tearing through the haze, and the song quickly becomes anything but a gentle lullaby save for the twinkling tambourine.

In the end, perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to The Bubbles with respect to their debut album is this: It’s impossible to stop grinning while listening to Super Psychedelic Sound Explosion. And that’s the whole point of rock, right?

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