Tops – Easy Friend

Montreal-based quartet Tops is modern day AM gold. In “Easy Friends”, from the UK/EU release of their debut album Tender Opposites, vocalist Jane Penny cuts through a hazy, synthed-out dream calling back to the disco of the 70’s as she slowly builds from a gentle buoyancy to what you would have to call – and affectionately so – an almost shrill climax and then dexterously drops back into a balmy bossa nova to ease you out of the track. Tops has an uncommon way of blending accessible pop and the avant-garde into a seamless coupling. The unadorned, pastoral attitude of the band is what I find most attractive; it doesn’t make you like it, it lets you like it. By Aaron Meyer

TOPS (Soundcloud)

* Get more tunes and rad events from Aaron Meyer (aka Honeybear) at the Los Angeles based MOUSER.

Rating 8.7

Reviewed by b3