Embarrassing Fruits

Embarrassing Fruits' first release, a split-EP with Greensboro's Blank Blank, bore the title Sumr Stupid Drunk Fun and a sound that was vintage '90s indie rock—guitars with some Sebadoh fuzz and Sea & Cake vines and propulsive cymbal-crash rhythms hurtling and teetering toward youthful indiscretion and inevitable regret.

The Fruits' five-song EP The First Time followed in 2008. When Joe Norkus sang "We've all got the same song stuck in our head" on "Bicycle," Superchunk's ode to drunken breakups, "Driveway to Driveway," was a good candidate to be that tune. Such was the young band's fealty to the genre's regional forebears. The band's full-length debut, Community/Exploitation, followed the next year, opening its embrace to Dinosaur Jr./Built to Spill guitar catharsis and Pavement's fractured song structures and laconic vocals. "Fuck that," was essentially the chorus to the wistful slacker hymn "Like That."

After a series of line-up changes and LP delays, the band's local label, Trekky Records, introduced last year's full-length, Frontier Justice, as a new beginning, the "first timely artistic statement from a now permanent trio." That was shorthand for a broadening of the band's influences and palette. Bassist Lee Shaw composed half of the 14 songs, bringing in pop hooks and alt-rock riffage to sidle alongside Norkus' indie pedigree.

The equal billing could've devolved into a schizophrenic these-are-mine-and-those-are-his tracklist, but Frontier Justice finds their tendencies meshing into something greater. "Long Distance Breakup Summer," for instance, sounds like a Wrens and Weezer mash-up, while "Sugar Train" bristles with Stooges energy on the verses until it blossoms into Nada Surf choruses. This is the sound of a band discovering that the abandon of youth, Smr Stupid Drunk Fun and casual hookups become seven-year itches, drinking crutches and adult responsibility—themes that need more sonic means of expression. So far, they seem up to the task. —John Schacht