THE HORROR THE HORROR

Wilderness

myspace.com/thth

With the Strokes back in action, stylistic descendents The Horror The Horror picked a great time for reinvention. This is the Swedish quintet’s third album—traditionally the make-or-break one—and singer Joel Lindström knows the dangers of failing to evolve. “Come in with the underground, go out with the undertow,” he sings on “Vanity,” a song about feeling like the last of the ’00s neo-garage rockers. The group avoids redundancy not by radically reinventing itself, but by tidying and tightening up, giving its choppy guitar chords a Ginsu-grade sharpening and experimenting with jangly funk and Johnny Marr echo. On the Afro-poppy “Imbecile,” they slip into Vampire Weekend’s boat shoes—fine footwear for skipping into the future.

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