Spectreview: Night Moves – Can You Really Find Me

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Man, those 20-year increments. Time folds over and over itself like phyllo dough.

Night Moves is a Minneapolis duo that makes effortless, nostalgic indie rock in the vein of countless drug-addled 70’s bands. Their harmonies are sweet, their synths are syrupy and their image is devastatingly on point, as evidenced by their new album, Can You Really Find Me. It’s a melange of so many classic sounds it’s almost not worth it to spot each individual influence. Take seven-minute epic head trip “Ribboned Skies,” with a piano led verse ala Elton John and a Lennonesque pre-chorus that then leads into a stomping refrain with the same phased synth tones as Pink Floyd’s “Any Colour You Like.” There’s touches of country via slide and pedal steel (not the least of which are yearning opener “Mexico” and Wilco-cum-Fleetwood Mac hymnal “Keep Me in Mind”), as well as lyrical time-jumps (like a plundering of U2’s “Bad” on “Saving the Dark”) and washed out Hall & Oates pastiches that come across more in the lineage of revivalists like Ariel Pink and Wild Nothing (“Recollections”). That’s not to say it’s not an enjoyable record, far from it; Can You Really Find Me may be one of the most purely listenable indie rock records out this year, each quasi-pop song crafted with care and assembled with impeccable parts. John Pelant’s thin and swooping voice matches that 70’s LA sheen perfectly, and it’s a huge reason of why this music works so well. The sequencing is also pretty great, letting the album wash over you without getting too stagnant, despite a few too many mid-tempo ballads near the end. It’s like a cool shower on a hot day set to music, and sometimes that all anybody needs, especially now.

Recommended for pool floating on those inflatable inner tubes you used to sled on in the winter.