The 5 songs of ‘Warma’, the new EP of Darlings due through Famous Class Records on March 15th, sound familiar enough to attract your attention at the first listening. With their low-fi garage punk-rock, and their probable diverse influences, the songs could be some incongruously upbeat and melodious lost Sonic Youth or Pavement’s tunes.

Using upbeat bouncing rhythms, the opening track ‘Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself’ is power pop-punk with just enough distortion and female vocal harmonies to evoke both genres, whereas ‘Split it out’ has happy jumping guitars which fill up the song with exuberance and playfulness while it will make you wonder where you could have already heard this upbeat high-pitched guitar line. At the first listening, I thought about some Strokes-like catchy riff with a softer and more laid-back attitude, but I’m not sure anymore…

I don’t have the lyrics, and they are somewhat hard to catch, but the female and male vocals exchange something like this on ‘Don’t Be So Hard On Yourself ‘: ‘Cinnamon Girl/you got one thing on your mind/ I could watch you for hours/I could show you how to die, but I like you/Die, I could still show you’. I should always be suspicious, happy tunes always hide dark places.
   
But it is with the last track, the catchy ‘Big Girl’ that their ingenious blend of garage rock and sweet melodies explodes, with furiously bright or crashing guitars and Maura Lynch’s delicate harmonies behind Peter Rynsky’s vocals. It is just the right balance of young energy and nostalgic melody to keep you interested till the end.

The four of them (singer and guitarist Peter Rynsky, drummer Matt Solomon, bassist Joe Tirabassi, and guitarist/singer Maura Lynch) were all friends in college at New York University. They started playing together in their apartment on Bleeker Street, and formed the band in 2007, before getting recognition in the New York Times and many other papers and magazines for their full length ‘Yeah I know’.

Listening to ‘Spit it out’ again, I still think there are some light Strokes’ fingerprints on that track,… you can listen to their EP on their bandcamp page:

http://darlings.bandcamp.com/album/warma