Listening to… The Hairs

Echoey lo-fi sped-up pop, like a cassette recording of a live show from a world away. The perfectly imbalanced production adds the right air of mystery, and the vocals are off-key and raw without being deliberately geeky. All the song titles are funny on their own—“I’ve Been Working Out,” “Satan Says,” “If I Get Back on My Horse Again”—and funnier in the context of the chirpy pop context and shambolic execution. There’s honest emotion here, plus hormones. It’s a fine world we live in, that can have The Hairs and Mikal Cronin and any number of edgy popsters living in it all at once.