Spacy Los Angeles quartet
Cosmonauts return with their fourth long-player, 2016's
A-OK! An outlier on the
Burger Records roster,
Cosmonauts eschew the lackadaisical "good enough for a cassette" aesthetic of most of their lo-fi labelmates in favor of slinky, British-inspired space rock with heavy new wave tendencies. They can turn up their amps and make as much noise as their garage contemporaries, but the 12-string jangle of tuneful standouts like "Good Lucky Blessing" and "Cruisin'" have their roots in the earnest rock paeans of
Simple Minds or even early Brit-pop. Similarly, the fine riffing of the title track channels
the Bunnymen, while "Doom Generation" further reveals
Cosmonauts' affinity for coolly droning
Jesus and Mary Chain-style mood rock. In a Californian landscape where slouchy underachieving four-track rock is the norm, it's nice to hear a band with a sense of craft. ~ Timothy Monger