Generationals

The melodies step lightly, the keyboard shuffling hand-in-hand with guitar jangle. Clad in paisley and bound for California, their journey's a whimsical soft shoe that balances classic '60s pop and a little blue-eyed soul with intermittent bursts of electronics and subtle background effects. In their ringing tunefulness, nostalgic bent and sweet vocal harmonies, New Orleans duo Generationals recall Park The Van labelmates like Dr. Dog and The High Strung. Ultimately, you can simply call it craftsmanship.

Childhood chums Grant Widmer and Ted Joyner love the clean lines and warm arrangements of vintage pop music, from the Brill Building to Motown and on to San Francisco flower power. Simple hooks bob on a quilt of competing instruments and tonalities sewn together like their influences—like so, without the stitches showing. They record to tape, abetting their attempts to capture that old-time sound.

Widmer and Joyner have been making music together since high school. They helped found Eames Era while in college at Louisiana State University. That petered out in 2008 after seven years and a couple albums, but Widmer and Joyner kept at it, releasing their Generationals debut, Con Law, in July 2009. It garnered plenty of buzz, propelled in part by the horn-laden, hand-clapping Stax rave-up, "When They Fight, They Fight." This beautiful bit of pastiche suggests a classic lo-fi 45.

Their March follow-up, Actor-Caster, is less of a stylistic grab bag. It retains the catchy '60s pop patina, just now colored a bit with gray-skied new wave romanticism. The Generationals perform live as a five-piece (including ex-Dr. Dog drummer Juston Stens) to better capture all the layers and nuance of the music. —Chris Parker