Zero Hits

Some credit has to be given to a band to come up with one of the most unsearchable names ever on the Internet. (This was perhaps the point.) In any event, the Gang’s debut album — Zero Hits, with an album cover that almost seems like it should have come out on Zero Hour, for that matter — is the kind of enjoyable enough album that comes from listening to one’s assembled-in-the-’90s music collection and perhaps wondering while importing it into iTunes, “So why don’t they make music like that any more?” No criticism, as there’s a lot about the Gang that should be a little more common in any event — shared lead vocals between male and female musicians, no one “lead” figure as such, a ready exuberance that doesn’t come across as forced, and some killer songs, as the opening, near obsessive “Rose Island,” with its ever more relentless chug and rhythmic chanted vocals, shows from the start. There are hints of any number of indie rock touchstones throughout Zero Hits, but Unrest and Stereolab’s fracturing and reuse of Krautrock, especially with their shared role model of the Fall, is key, with choppy guitars and steady beats underpinning the gang shouts of songs like “One Up the Sun.” The heroic surge of “Sea So” practically reassembles the entire history of Motorik-goes-indie into one song, calling to mind everything from early Flying Nuns to Pavement and more besides, while the cheery “The Man with Your Plan” and its gang shouts provides a lovely contrast to the psychedelic/tribal pulse of “There’s a Beach at the End of Penny Lane,” ending the album on a note of exuberant obsession. – Ned Raggett