Asleep at heaven’s gate? That’s funny, because this sounds anything but snoozy to us. The heaven bit we get, there’s more than enough abounding gracefully in colourful stereo here to drown Rogue Wave in adjectives like ethereal, chimingly-angelic, halo-shaking and the like. And if we visualise them there’s an overwhelming white light gleaming out from behind them, that sort of thing, you know. Are they the wrong side of said gates? Possibly. Rattling their chains, scaling them perhaps, breaking into heaven? This isn’t quite pristine enough to be a vision directly from the big suite upstairs, alongside the purity there is some grit and some measured discord. Like Mercury Rev do discord, in a beautiful big awesome kind of psychedelic way. But not to the point of crescendo or ozone-shattering inventiveness. But it’s a nice record, either way. There really are few chinks in this tunic.
They’ve been around for a number of years now, out of San Francisco, perfecting their sunshine state harmonic indie, which probably explains why they arrive in the UK with their third album so very perfectly formed. There really is little to find fault with. Calling the likes of Band Of Horses, Built To Spill and Modest Mouse peers and sourcing inspiration right back from the Beach Boys, Big Star and early REM their songs reverberate with a pert creativity, a chiming hopefulness and full-bodied, no-half-measured harmonies.
‘Own Your Own Home’ is a fragrant celebratory ritual desert-shanty between The Shins and The Coral, ‘Chicago x12’ is wired like Wilco descending into a dream state and ‘Harmonium’ is a 6-minute Death Cab For Cutie-smothering, racing epic with a pounding climax that Coldplay would kill, or at least offer staggering amounts of money or a Hollywood wife, for. The lesson here? Do not judge a book/compact-disc/digital-release by its cover and/or scrolling title (depending on the medium you are enjoying it by). Rogue Wave: raising hell, with hippie bells on.