XRay Eyeballs

O.J. San Felipe, leader of Brooklyn four-piece Xray Eyeballs, just wanted to make some lullabies. They are, he says, the most memorable types of songs: “Everyone remembers them from when they’re babies.” Thing is, lullabies serve a markedly different purpose than Xray Eyeballs’ songs. The 11 tracks on the band’s April LP, Not Nothing, are woefully ineffective sedatives; they are, however, memorable.

With bandmates Carly Rabalais (bass, vocals), Rop Style (synth, theremin, beats) and Allison Press (drums), San Felipe crafts murky, woozy pop songs that certainly evoke the dreamy smears of shoegaze and mopey British indie pop. But the band’s soul is in bratty garage rock. San Felipe’s old band, Golden Triangle, was much more comfortable in the garage mold, letting its guitars ring brashly, while driving faster and louder through tunes. With Xray Eyeballs, he hasn’t entirely abandoned that impulse. “Big Toe” is econo-class girl-group pop with big reverb, something like Hunx And His Punx playing in a sauna. With his nasally sneer, San Felipe can stand toe-to-toe with garage-rock’s snottiest and frequently outdo them. “Fake Wedding” rides a primitive, hooky arrangement that could’ve been a Jacuzzi Boys A-side. But with deftly employed backing vocals and humid synths, Xray Eyeballs turn a simple summer jam into a hot, sticky slacker anthem. “It’s a party for me and a party for you,” San Felipe asserts.

“Po’ Jam” is a staggering heartbreak ballad that finds Xray Eyeballs at their slowest and most melancholy. San Felipe sings with drunken conviction and gathers the song’s downtempo stumble into a purposeful, red-eyed refrain. Still, the band is a failure of a sandman. If the goal were to mine tried-and-true melodies, however, Xray Eyeballs succeeded. They find themselves sitting comfortably in an inviting, intriguing gap between the hooky retro-rock revisionism of garage bands like Nobunny and the hazy pop of The Pains of Being Pure At Heart. It’s nothing like a nap, but it’s not far from sweet dreams, either. —Bryan Reed