My Teenage Stride: Ears Like Golden Bats

Label: Becalmed

Cooing and crooning their way through their third studio album, Brooklyn’s own My Teenage Stride hit their stride with witty and delectable ditties channeling glorious but awkward adolescence. Led by Jedediah Smith’s sweet and plaintive vocals, Ears Like Golden Bats is full of the quirky energy of pubescence. There’s a Morrissey-like quality in his voice, and he is how the high-coiffed troubadour might sound had not the doom and gloom of adulthood proved so besotting. Overall, the effect is charming exuberance laced with ever so slight ennui, nowhere more evident than in the bittersweet “We’ll Meet at Emily’s,” a track chock full of teenage drama and trauma, and also in the listless “Reversal,” a number carried by Smith’s winsome but decidedly wistful vocals. The band impressively juggles sounding both forlorn and hopeful, creating the perfect soundtrack for days you want to be nostalgic and relive your teenage triumphs and failures. (Carrie)