In an overzealous moment, we’ve all made the mistake. You twist the cap off a new bottle of soda (or pop the cork off some bubbly), and you pour yourself a glass too quickly. The liquid isn’t the problem–it’s those tickling bubbles who climb their way upwards and ultimately cascade over all the edges. Long Island, New York act Twin Sister‘s “Bad Street” is just as effervescent a moment, providing all the enjoyment with no sticky cleanup.

A refreshing bit of pop (in the best sense of the term), “Bad Street” comes off as an after-hours counterpart to Midnite Vultures, with that album’s frenetic energy replaced with something more suave and sexy. For those who remember them, the closest touchstone is probably the first album by indie-pop act Call & Response, who were so on the nose about their sparkling nature they recorded a song called “Blowin’ Bubbles.”

However, there is more here than the track’s slinky pep. Twin Sister successfully assimilate a variety of influences into a song that manages to wind up feeling both unflappably cool and unapologetically dorky. The final verse, a spoken word breakdown that channels Lex or Debbie Harry, is misplaced in this era by a good quarter-century but completely works.

“Bad Street” comes to us from the band’s debut LP, In Heaven, which was released in late September by Domino Records and follows 2010′s Color Your Life EP.

Click here to listen to Twin Sister’s new debut In Heaven on Spotify.

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One of the most time-honored words that rock music has given the English language is the adjective “Beatlesque” – a word that surprisingly still triggers spell-check. One would think that the word would be in official dictionaries now. It’s a very useful term that contains its own definition right there in it. It denotes something – generally a song, but sometimes just a sound or general artistic aesthetic – that resembles The Beatles.

“Love Or Death,” by Lawrence, Kansas’ Hospital Ships, is sneakily Beatlesque. It doesn’t include any of the Technicolor ’60s-style psychedelia that the word normally conjures, likely because a one-man band can only do so much. Listen to the melody of “Love Or Death,” though, and the first bell it’s likely to ring is that of late-period Fab Four songs by John Lennon along the lines of “Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds,” “Across the Universe,” and “Strawberry Fields Forever.” It shares the same stately pace and Lennon’s touch for crafting a serpentine melody that manages to twist and turn around on itself during any given verse, a trick that hides its complexity in plain sight by making it so damn catchy.

The second bell it rings is The Flaming Lips, perhaps the most Beatlesque band to rarely ever be referred to as Beatlesque. Sole Hospital Ships member Jordan Geiger (formerly of Shearwater, The Appleseed Cast, and The Minus Story) shares Wayne Coyne’s Dust Bowl-states yelp and the Lips’ affection for layering pure-pop melodies with oddball sonic textures. The way Geiger piles competing layers of feedback and distortion atop his melody without ever coming close to concealing it is a move the Lips mastered at least as far back as Hit to Death in the Future Head, and it’s one that most of their imitators have a hard time replicating, but Geiger manages it with ease on “Love Or Death.”

Like the best Beatlesque bands, Hospital Ships are able to mine inspiration without stooping to imitation. Listening to “Love Or Death,” it’s easy to imagine either The Beatles or The Flaming Lips recording the song, but it’s impossible to say which of either of those bands’ albums it could’ve appeared on. Geiger may resemble Lennon or Coyne, but he has his own vision of where to take that resemblance.

Catch “Love or Death” on Hospital Ships’ recently released sophomore LP, Lonely Twin, available courtesy of Graveface Records.

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September & October 2011 MP3 Rewind

Summer Camp “Round the Moon”

For the better part of a decade and a half, Gordon Zacharias has been releasing records as Fan Modine, packing his songs with melancholy sentiments and lovingly orchestrated indie-pop compositions. Zacharias had gone quiet for six years prior to the release of his new LP, Gratitude for the Shipper, but the time off seems to have served him quite well. Fan Modine’s melodies have never sounded as fully formed and enchanting as they do on the latest record, with the album’s fourth song, “Through the Valley,” serving as a prime example.

“Through the Valley” begins with a half-minute prelude awash with found sounds and lingering guitar and piano notes. It is a spectral mood, all hazy and ghostly, interrupted suddenly by the elastic groove of the song proper. If the shift is unexpected it is also effective, serving as a springboard for bouncy piano chords and the clever string melodies which gild the choruses. The production here comes courtesy of Chris Stamey (of The dB’s fame) and is crisp and bright.

As it continues on, “Through the Valley” keeps snowballing, accelerating forward on its own momentum until its gentle denouement. It is an elegant composition in the vein of tunes by The Chamber Strings or Alex Chilton, but it also has the backbone of acts like Spoon or ELO.

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Vanish Valley “Races”

Sarah Jaffe “Better Than Nothing”

Jonquil “Get Up”

Philadelphia’s War on Drugs are the damnedest folk-rock band one is likely to hear in this day and age. While the roots of their sound are very definitely sunken very deep in Dylan and The Byrds, they take that sound to some out-of-the-way places. The War on Drugs sneak up on the tambourine man, drag him onto their own magic swirlin’ ship, and on the jingle-jangle mornin’ leave him staggering through the foggy ruins of time.

Take “Baby Missiles,” a track from the band’s second full-length album, Slave Ambient. At heart, it’s a sprightly folk tune not far removed from Dylan’s “Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts.” However, The War on Drugs smother the song with droning, swirling psychedelic keyboards that ebb and flow atop each other, creating the feeling of being chased by a pack of hellhounds down an alley where the paving stones refuse to sit still.

Andy Granduciel’s vocals are a mix of Dylan, The Waterboys’ Mike Scott and Wovenhand’s David Eugene Edwards as he spits out his lyrics in order to stay ahead of the song’s frantic gallop – one gets the impression that if paused for a breath the rest of the band would trample him in the dust. “Baby Missiles” doesn’t really fit in the genre generally referred to as psych-folk, typified by bands like Mazzy Star – it’s a little too psycho to be psych-folk.

(Previously spotlighted artist) Kurt Vile, one of the founding members of The War on Drugs, moved on to a well-regarded solo career before Slave Ambient was recorded. Vile is an immensely talented individual, but on “Baby Missiles” his old band doesn’t seem to miss him much. Granduciel and his cronies have more than enough ideas of their own to make The War on Drugs a fascinating band.

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September & October 2011 MP3 Rewind

Teenage Fanclub “Baby Lee”

Devendra Banhart “Baby”