The Mary Onettes

In their website bio Sweden’s the Mary Onettes admit their love for a certain decade of British pop music: the one featuring the Stone Roses and the Cure. (But let’s also add New Order, the Smiths, the JAMC and Echo & the Bunnymen.) To deny such a thing and record an album like The Mary Onettes would be foolish, considering it is the sum of these influences. But what this quartet lack in originality they make up for excessively through their homage, which sounds like every anglophile’s wet dream fulfilled. Single "Void” evokes the Bunnymen’s anthemic prowess, with singer Philip Ekström nailing Ian McCulloch’s deep, rich tone and Petter Agurén’s chiming guitar echoing Will Sargent’s. "Laughter,” on the other hand, sounds straight off of Disintegration’s cutting room floor, as the band build the same heavenly bed of synths and gloom that made the Cure’s music such a brooding paradise. And let us not forget New Order, who you somehow know are responsible for the pensive, synth-laden swerve of "Slow.” Not everyone will succumb to their inspired throwback charm (though Grey’s Anatomy has, twice) but that’s expected with such a vivid re-branding of the past. In defence of the Mary Onettes, they’ve merely fine-tuned a long-standing tradition that falls upon every great era of music with a debut full-length filled with the great romantic hooks that made the band’s heroes so legendary.