The Little Ones:
Morning Tide

Paste Rating

50

respectable

User Rating

(2 votes)

63

Your Rating

These Little Ones have some growing up to do

Dropped by Astralwerks, after having recorded only one EP last year, this LA-based band recently caught the attention of Chopshop Records with a winsome sunshine-y sound that often recalls ’70s-pop staples like The Raspberries, Big Star and Badfinger. But unlike their forebears, The Little Ones haven’t yet realized that the key to really good power-pop is to underpin it with a little darkness and angst, with some eccentric pathologies and intelligent narrative arcs. Instead it seems like The Little Ones found some of the Flaming Lips’ animal suits discarded in a dustbin, put them on, and spent the next 11 songs spinning relentlessly cheerful yarns that blur together like the lines of an epic poem—a cartoonish rock Iliad sung in freakish, sped-up unison. Creating a musical theme that stretches across the album isn’t a bad idea, but The Little Ones fail to pull it off, and the songs suffer from a frothy sameness.