Scraggly and often charming for it, Estonia's
Lack of Eoins come up with an enjoyable trifle of an understated indie rock album on
Echo Group, often sounding more like a tribute to New Zealand's underrated
3-D's than anything else. There's a similar sense of stop-start catchiness, singing that alternates between silly and smoothly sweet, and all sorts of odd little twists on familiar approaches, like the buried keyboard drones and sparkling guitar on "House Grey" and the radio signal-ish start and constantly changing rhythms on "I've Got Some Numbers." If little on the album feels like a consequential track as such, as a whole it's brimming with good spirits and a peppy genre exercise, rock not out to change the world nor act like the problems of its peer group are all that matter in the world. When the ragged but right voices chorus here and there on "Children's Society," no further justification is needed. ~ Ned Raggett