Swound! – Into the Sea

Choosing to package their debut full-length with a 76 minute in-the-studio documentary suggests the four brothers that make up Swound! aren’t lacking self-assurance. Admittedly, said doc is decidedly tongue-in-cheek, but it’s nonetheless a pretty confident statement from a band whose Wikipedia entry was deleted in 2010 for lack of interest/verified notability.

Into the Sea should ensure a reinstatement of their page, though it’s going to need a lot of hyperlinks: their family-friendly power-pop comes laden with geeky references, from Back to the Future in opener Your Kids Are Going to Love It, to a guest-appearance from Troll 2 star George Hardy on Big Trouble. Musically, their DNA is pretty transparent: Tokyo carries traces of days spent covering Blink-182; Rivers Cuomo is owed a song-writing credit or five; while they share more than witty promos with OK Go. Swound!’s exuberance has a high propensity to irritate, but they squeak through on goofy charm.