THE AIRFIELDS PLAY SNEAKY DEE’S (431 COLLEGE) FEB 2.
Sometimes you love something so much that you risk squeezing the life out of it. The Airfields probably sleep with their arms wrapped around boxes of twee, jangly ‘80s cassettes, but what makes their debut full-length Up All Night more than a mere genre exercise by moonlighting members of The Diableros is the fact that they’ve got so many melodies, you’d think they were rifling through other bands’ closets —?if they weren’t so nice. They swing between emulating a janglier Wedding Present (“Icing Sugar,” not that David Lush’s wan pipes sound much like David Gedge’s phlegmatic baritone) and occasionally Isn’t Anything–era My Bloody Valentine (“Never See You Smile”), and their songwriting is strong enough that it gives rise to the idea that this might be the perfect time for that well-worn sound to gain a wider audience. Up All Night makes you want to fall freshly in love, if only so you have an excuse to put its songs on a mixtape.