Now This Is A New Rush: Andersons

“Young Love” is one of the most exhilarating songs I’ve heard so far in 2013. It comes courtesy of a Japanese band I had no idea existed until last weekend called Andersons, a boring name concealing something really special. “Young Love” does a lot of what the music I’ve fallen for so far this year does – it is, as the name hints at, interested in the past, in particularly the teenage years when romance first blooms and burns brightest. This is territory the likes of Shortcake Collage Tape and i-fls have explored too, but Andersons do one very different thing. Whereas the other two artists poke at memories, everything sounding like new-born nostalgia, Andersons capture the rush of that moment. They take inspiration from one of the finest just-waiting-to-soundtrack-the-credits-of-a-teen-movie songs ever, The Cranberries’ “Dreams.” Andersons move more quickly, though, and rarely slow down for anything. Instead, the words conveying all the heavy stuff. “Tell me how to smile/tell me how to touch/tell me how to speak” the lead singer pleads, before letting out an impassioned “love me! love me!” It’s teenage romance captured fantastically – not totally rational or particularly thought out, but earnest as fuck.

That it comes off a self-titled EP with three more strong songs only makes this discovery all the sweeter. “Walk Together” brings to mind the Fleetwood-Mac-inspired grooving of current American buzz-worthies HAIM, except with a part later in the song where the vocals trip over themselves. It’s a trick that also appears at the start of “Drive,” an even more laid-back number anchored by a simple-but-effective piano line and that voice, which really pushes this EP over the top. And it ends with “Nothing,” a sparse song in the mold of The xx, built around only piano, a clicky-clacky beat and THAT VOICE which turns a line as simple as “I have nothing to say” with one dripping with emotion, of history. Fantastic EP, listen here.