Endless Winter

After an OK enough debut EP, Run Run Run's first full-length effort has a little more meat on its bones, though admittedly it's a pleasure that feels caught in a tension between 1969, 1989, and the present. The line of descent that runs from the Brian Jonestown Massacre to the Warlocks and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club has resulted in a southern California psych rock style that seems convinced that nothing much has happened since Kim Fowley and Rodney Bingenheimer were the mayors of Sunset Strip, and it grows wearying to hear the same moves redone, however enthusiastically. Run Run Run, though unable to shake that jones completely, also bring in a guitar pop glaze that recalls more recent forebears from the U.K. plus an appreciation of crisp, punchy delivery that ensures the band doesn't always want to sound like it's still the Vietnam War — calling a song "Wire" might well have been a tribute. At its most brisk, Endless Winter has an enjoyable kick — "Wait Up for You" has a sweetly killer arrangement for the chorus, while songs like "Try" and "2 A.M." find them doing an Interpol move with choppy riffs and steady but tense rhythms (the key difference being Run Run Run's songs are actually good). It also manages a neat trick by getting better as it goes along, so credit to whoever sequenced it — by the time "Song and Dance" appears with its queasy drones and neo-shoegaze cascade, both band and album are on a total roll. Perhaps the most eyebrow-raising moment is the album's one cover version — Mazzy Star's hushed early-'90s classic "Fade into You," which Run Run Run actually transform into a new arrangement that sounds like them instead of simply cloning the original. They haven't nailed a perfect album, but Run Run Run are in a good place to get to somewhere new down the road.