One Track Mind

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Some bands seem innately blessed with the ability to conjure up songs that get stuck in your head after only one listen. Night Driving in Small Towns is one such act. The Atlanta group authors tunes which, while superficially modest and straightforward, are fiendishly designed to enter your brain via your ear canal, set up camp, and refuse to leave.

Led by Andrea Rogers and Colby Wright, who have written songs together for over a decade, Night Driving makes music that is striking in its simplicity, echoing similarly oriented outfits such as Camera Obscura, Jenny Owen Youngs, and She & Him. While the band’s profile remains somewhat underground, they already have an EP and a full-length to their name, not to mention some kind (and unexpected) praise from Rolling Stone, who in 2008 named them one of the Top 25 Bands on Myspace.

Their new LP, Serial Killer, was released on April 20th courtesy of Lower 40 Records and features eleven new compositions. The second track on the new disc is “Barstool,” a three minute-long charmer that plays up snappy electric guitar lines, rhythmic acoustic strums, a playful bass bounce, and most importantly of all, Rogers’ candy-sweet vocals. Those vocals may very well be Night Driving in Small Towns’ calling card, rounding out the backing track with pitch-perfect harmonies and a certain blushing strut. “Barstool” is a classic cut of indie-pop but never slips too deeply into twee–it is the kind of simple, timeless tune Zooey and M. always seem on the verge of grasping but never quite can.