Album Review: QTY - QTY

The hint is even in their Twitter handle: @QTYNYC. This band wear their home city like a leather jacket on a slouching Ramone.

It's in the music, which straddles a bunch of Gotham eras - at times pitching right between The Velvet Underground's junkie stroll and The Strokes' wired guitars. The thing is, the band's core duo of Dan Lardner - he of the perfectly drawled vocals - and Alex Niemetz's second voice and sometimes almost Television-like unfurling guitar lines might be too young to know just what they're referencing. Maybe it's just in their DNA. Or they just know their history.

Getting the textures right might come from the decidedly non-New York source of Suede's Bernard Butler as producer. It might be him who knows when to keep the elements apart and when to let them fall together. Dress/Undress is a statement of intent: handclap choruses, pugnacious, just so right. The clipped staccato Word For This also finds the mood.  

They do drop the cool occasionally. Cold Nights has them turning inward to battle on, while New Beginnings with Niemetz's hopeful vulnerability upfront is a nice counter to Lardner's offhand insouciance.

An album where the style eventually reveals a surprising substance.