"But the national breakout of Sharp Pins-a.k.a. Chicago DIY-scene pillar Kai Slater, an artist young enough to be Macca's great-grandson-provides the most heartening indicator that the spirit of '65 is still alive in 2025. Once a low-key vessel for the dainty tunes that didn't suit Slater's noisy power trio Lifeguard, Sharp Pins were elevated to feature attraction when his self-issued 2024 album, , received an expanded wide release this year, followed by a coronating tour with indie elders the Hard Quartet."
"While Radio DDR's endearing lo-fi singalongs presented Slater as a valedictorian from the Robert Pollard school of industrious Midwestern home-recording auteurs singing in faux British accents, the album shirked the rough-sketch aesthetics and subversive strategies of old-school GBV records-these were fully flowered songs nurtured in a terrarium of tape hiss."
"When you're part of a generation whose adolescence was stolen by the pandemic and who seems consigned to a lifetime of debt and doomscrolling, singing silly love songs starts to feel like an act of defiance."
Sharp Pins, led by Kai Slater, achieved a national breakout and indicates the continued vitality of 1965-style power-pop in 2025. The self-issued 2024 album received an expanded wide release and a coronating tour with indie elders the Hard Quartet. Radio DDR pairs endearing lo-fi singalongs and faux British accents with fully flowered songs nurtured in a terrarium of tape hiss. The record favors polished hook-driven melodies over rough-sketch subversion, presenting a portrait of a young man summoning romance and possibility amid pandemic-disrupted adolescence and economic precarity. Slater followed with Balloon Balloon Balloon, preserving intense hook density while allowing more outré ideas to flourish.
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