Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin’s Fog of Sound

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin
The High Country
Polyvinyl

Modest to a fault, the understated Missouri band Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin (aka SSLYBY) has quietly compiled a stellar catalogue of state-of-the-art pop over the past decade. Briskly dispatching 11 songs in under a half-hour, SSLYBY’s fifth studio album is an entrancing fog of sound, highlighted by buzzing guitars and blurry-yet-insistent vocals, with noisier-than-usual drums adding to a sense of hazy urgency. While numerous groups use interesting textures to compensate for a lack of solid material, the tunes on The High Country are smart and catchy, and could be covered in any number of styles. Although it’s possible to hear echoes of R.E.M. in the intertwined guitars and voices, and the taut melodies sometimes evoke Spoon (who sound jaded and weary by comparison), SSLYBY seems to be getting more original, and younger, by the album.