Cut Off Your Hands, You & I

New Zealand's musical exports have mostly consisted of delightful weirdos like Flight of the Concords, Tall Dwarfs and Split Enz, but literate, effervescent quartet Cut Off Your Hands may be the band that establishes Auckland as a hotbed for pop bliss. You and I, the band's debut full-length (recorded as a quartet, though they're continuing on as a trio following the recent departure of guitarist Michael Ramirez), expands upon the intricately-constructed sound of their two EPs, matching jittery, jangly post-punk guitar runs with frontman Brent Harris 'spazzy yelps and sneakily anthemic hooks.

Cut Off Your Hands deploy a classic and still-underused method of pop madness: they team up joyous arena rock tricks (hand claps, big singalong breakdowns, big gooey keyboard swells) with Harris 'sad-eyed, desolate lyrics. Case in point: "It Doesn't Matter" does such a great job building its swirling hook that it takes a few listens to realize that the centerpiece line is, "Disappointment is never far away." Elsewhere, part of Harris 'argument in the fuck-this-town stomp of "Let's Get Out of Here" is "Forget there's nothing left to live for." And besides being the best song Bloc Party will never write, "Expectations" also contains the heartbreaking couplet "These expectations keep pulling at me/ I just can't hold on."

And just when you think these cats are only about shaking and aching, they bust out "Nostalgia," a gorgeous bit of Wall of Sound balladry that would be an instant lighter-waver if the kids still did that at shows. With all these epic moves and grand statements flying around, it'd be easy for Cut Off Your Hands to devolve into parody, but You and I is a striking, confident debut that never fails, never falters and never holds back on any joy or heartbreak.