Le Reno Amps - So For Your Thrills

Le Reno Amps' second LP, So For Your Thrills, finds the band still ploughing those alt-folk furrows, throwing in dashes of punk, power-pop and a notion of old country sounds here and there. The choruses are bouncy, the rhythms are two-step and the backing vocals follow the new-wave, male-female harmony, model. Flaunting a Pavement influence that somehow isn't quite so noticeable or important this time around, the album passes by notions of Weezer, Ben Kweller and even indulges in a slight little dabble with the ramshackle folk-punk of Defiance, Ohio. Only the relentless decline of Poison Letter towards Get Cape! Wear Cape! Fly. disappoints but is well forgotten by the time Wound Up pulses to a close. Deliberately tumbledown at times, So For Your Thrills is eclectic, upbeat and all very distinctly modern, with a conscious and almost ironically retrospective tint, as if to show and tell where it all came from. [Neil Ferguson]