The band from Utah negotiates heavy issues with sunny indie pop.
The density of retro loops in the pop universe is now so high that one has to worry seriously about collisions and irritations in the pop-cultural time-space continuum. Is I’VE LOVED YOU FOR SO LONG by The Aces a homage to 80s indie pop, which was heavily influenced by 60s pop, or rather inspired by 2000s indie, in which bands like Sons And Daughters and The Long Blondes influenced by everything and everyone?
You don’t know, and it doesn’t really matter if the amalgam of influences grows into a stringent pop album like the band’s third from Utah. Sisters Cristal Ramirez (guitar, vocals) and Alisa Ramirez (drums) and school friends Katie Henderson (guitar) and McKenna Petty (bass) negotiate post-pandemic insights and mental health challenges in seemingly contradictory ways in the context of a sunny indie-pop, who is musically only rarely clouded by clouds. Outliers into neighboring genres such as pop-pop (“Miserable”) and shoegaze (“Suburban Blues”) are rare, but welcome.