Girls Are Short

If you locked a couple of Flaming Lips and one Kid606 into in a primary school music classroom filled to the brim with xylophones, sleigh bells and a several hyperactive, Ritalin-fiending ten-year-old prodigies, this would be the result after a few hours. The Mississauga/Brooklyn-based duo of Alex P. and Daniel Z. are former indie rock boys with a new-found penchant for synth pop, laptops, distorted vocals, fuzz boxes and hip-hop breaks. And their eclectic tastes shine through at almost every instant of this short but sweet album. Themes of chasing rainbows, sunny California, spelling bees and best buds pepper the lyrics sung by what often sounds like a youth church choir, while everything from surf guitars to house-y breaks throb in the background. Sometimes spacy, sometimes joltingly jingle-jangly, yet always infused with a consistent sense of idealistic and hopeful whimsy, Contact Kiss takes sonic experimentation to the utopian grade four playground where the computer nerds and starry-eyed dreamers fend off the bullies long enough to chase the girls around the woodchips in time to catch their first smooch.