Big Troubles Romantic Comedy

Big Troubles sound like the kind of band that defined your teenage years. Whether you were too scrawny to run a football to the other side, or your reputation hangs in the balance over whether or not you’ll get invited to the big dance, the New Jersey foursome most likely have an anthem to soundtrack that hopeless climax before everything gets resolved in the end. They’re like the noughties incarnation of Revenge of the Nerds – sophisto Millennials urgently scavenging through college rock’s back pages to retreat from what feels like perpetual heartache.

Romantic Comedy serves as a worthy epitaph to Big Troubles’ diminishing wonder years, but if they only knew that the upsetting events of high school usually define your perspective on future relationships. Fresh out of that stage, they’re understandably dismissive – after the noisy clatter of last year’s debut album, Worry, the band is already looking for ways to revere their encyclopedic Wikipedia findings into something much more amenable. In turn, clanging, highly-strung jangle emerges, as if they’re aiming to carve what a pop song should ideally sound like. Three decades later, it’s pretty clear that what Flying Nun cultivated will never be thought of as anything more than just a niche subculture, but their towering eagerness to turn it into something inviting, even mainstream, speaks volumes.

The eighties sure hemorrhaged a mixed bag of moping, wide-eyed miserabilists with affable intentions. Until this day, a leveled dose of sensibility continues to separate the good ones from the pack.  But at least Big Troubles have the advantage of some professional guidance – recorded by power pop purveyor Mitch Easter, he makes sure that these ten tracks never go astray even if they err too much on the safe side. Devoid of any prompt surprises, the forthright compositions of Softer Than Science and Minor Keys revamp some of that shambling, anorak pop with enough gusto to sound musically kitsch; thankfully, their undertoned mood fairly restricts them from sounding cloyingly jubilant. Still tied to the seventies, Easter provides his star pupils with proven embellishments from none other than heavyweights like Big Star (the twangy guitars in She Smiles for Pictures) and T. Rex (the glam vocal chorus in Time Bomb) to wake them up from deep slumber land.

Surely, Easter sees a past version of himself in Big Troubles, as the terribly hook-y arrangements somewhat recall the puppy faced, spray-haired primitivism of Afoot era Let’s Active. Particularly so in lead singer Ian Drennan, whose whispery vocals underlay the ringing, vaguely psychedelic guitars in Misery, not to mention the Morrissey-esque flamboyance of Sad Girls, whose suspended verse-chorus structure instantly shouts Sheila Take a Bow. Instead of dramatizing, their hushed, elegiac delivery actually renders them at their most distinctive – the shimmering Engine is all form and no content (thankfully, it’s plaintive, though rousing climax proves it needn’t be), and Make It Worse is that long, lost harmonious jangle pop hit that’s been twenty five years in the making.

Romantic Comedy does end with a grand gesture – Never Mind shows Drennan at his most panic-stricken, applying a coat of synths to give rise to the definitive pop song. It’s as obvious a mission statement as you can get – whether they flounder between affectionate and sorrowful, the young band spruce up their pop nuggets with sophistic precision and an emphasis on objectivity. And that’s okay. As Big Troubles develop into their own, we will eventually see a release that’s filled to the brim with both hooks and legitimacy. Their overzealous sense of accomplishment can’t be denied, especially when the album itself manages to never skip a beat. With time, they'll surpass John Hughes fanciful accounts when they should aspire to Cameron Crowe’s clear-eyed idealism, but I’ll take that over Reese Witherspoon falling on her cute meet's arms any day of the week.