Hi-Fi Serious

A.

As Hi-Fi Serious so ably demonstrates, sometimes it's just a matter of waiting for the rest of the world to catch up with you. At the time their second album, Monkey Kong, was released, A were pegged as a poor Brit-rock substitute for their angst-heavy American peers. Come their third album, though, A sound every bit the globe-straddling international rock band. Marking out the crucial mid-point between the impassioned emo-pop of Jimmy Eat World and the dumb-assed gross-out punk splatter of Blink-182, Hi-Fi Serious is a cackling, cartoonish descent into fearlessly tuneful power-pop larkery. It's saturated in an obvious love for beach-bum Americana: the lines "It's an endless summer / It's the summer forever" breeze through the song "Pacific Ocean Blue." And while the five are frighteningly eager to dally like playful puppies through all rock's cheesiest clichés--just check out guitarist Mark Chapman's Eddie Van Halen-style fretwork on "The Distance"—the music is always performed with enough charm to win the day. --Louis Pattison

Hi-Fi Serious Album: