The second album by Nashville-to-Los Angeles transplants
Duraluxe blends the chilly near-symphonic space rock of
Spiritualized and their ilk with the warped, folk-inflected neo-psychedelia of
the Flaming Lips,
Grandaddy, and
Mercury Rev while managing to avoid the clichés of both styles. The first track, "Shady Mess," opens with the kind of Krautrock-inspired soundscapes that
My Bloody Valentine or
Spacemen 3 specialized in, but then somehow transmogrifies into a clever, catchy pop song built on freaky-goosey organ parts and sheets of sound guitar akin to the lo-fi playfulness of
the Olivia Tremor Control. The album continues to cycle between those two sets of influences, mostly sticking to the latter on garage-poppy tunes like the
Pavement-influenced "Queen of Centerville" and the former on trippy sonic experiments like "Seeing Me" and "Jesus Will Supply Me." More produced and focused than their haphazard debut,
Dolorosa shows what
Duraluxe are capable of. ~ Stewart Mason