U.K. label Fortuna Pop specializes in the specifically British form of indie pop that has its roots in the C86 movement: for example, Tender Trap, the most recent project of Talulah Gosh singer Amelia Fletcher, is one of their flagship acts. This makes Finlay’s debut album, The Fall of Mary, quite a stylistic head fake: although this quintet led by singer/songwriter Adam Straw hails from London, their sound is rooted almost entirely in the spiky, shambolic D.I.Y. sound of vintage Pavement and Superchunk albums. Straw’s vocals are entirely in the Stephen Malkmus school of couldn’t-care-less hipsterism (honestly, on “This One,” he sounds like he’s quite literally about to fall asleep even as the band is charging into a scrappy little organ-driven riff rocker), and the guitars tend to favor the spindly, needly, high-register distortion that a generation of indie rockers from J Mascis to Liz Phair copped off old Neil Young & Crazy Horse albums. The one new thing that Finlay brings to the sound is an atypical fondness for structure and dynamics, both in terms of the album’s pacing and in the arrangements of the songs themselves: climaxing with the nervy full-tilt rush of “Phantasmagoria,” featuring keyboardist Lorna Crabbe’s piercing lead vocals and a downright crazed guitar solo, and then following it up with the Sonic Youth harmonics and Stereolab-like motorik beat of the closing “Tread on Flowers, Pt. 2″ makes for a brilliant one-two punch to close a somewhat derivative yet unapologetically enjoyable album. – Stewart Mason
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