The Changes' debut album, Today Is Tonight, is going to frustrate a handful of people and impress a lot more. "When I Wake" opens the record, as it did their previous self-released EP, with perky keyboard lines, crooning vocals, and glistening guitars. It remains the group's most accessible song, but "On a String" comes close. With a rubbery robotic beat and layers of bells that should sound repetitive, it ends up melancholic and graceful instead, nodding to soft-rockers and new-poppers of decades past with a bit of the detachment of their hometown's Sea and Cake. The appropriation here is so sharp it's almost scary, boiling the influences down to a whole that sounds distinctive, while still broad and catchy enough for casual listeners.
So it's a slap in the face when "Water of the Gods" kicks in with some lame sub-French Kicks bullshit guitar skiffle, wiping away the image of four boys in lab coats with test tubes full of expertly distilled pop. What's even weirder is that it's their newest song. "Sisters" may even be worse, with a drum loop so past its sell date it sounds like a Lex B-side. I won't even mention the disco song ("Twilight").
It's wouldn't be fair to pick on the Changes for recycling the best work from their demo (four tracks) on their debut, but that material towers over much of what they've come up with since. The exceptions are saved for the end of the album: "Such a Scene" is one of the few moments where the band drops its placid demeanor, with a heavy dose of Cure-like minor key paranoia. "In the Dark" follows that up with more simmering soft rock, milking a few notes of piano and the hiss of a mechanical high-hat for all the drama they're worth.
All which flows into "Her, You, and I", the band's oldest song that refuses to get old, swiping the clipped guitar from the intro to the Cure's "10:15 Saturday Night" before quashing it like a cigarette butt to croon the album's sharpest melody-- half lounge-pop and half guitar-flexing rave-up. Most listeners will be jumping on now and will hear a record with at least five great songs, and really, the album is much stronger than its worst moments. It just doesn't bode so well when their pastiche seemed smirking and effortless before (neither of which are bad things) but sounds flailing now.
