One Track Mind

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Even in light of a brutally unpleasant summer such as the current one, a good summer song can still make the season seem like the best thing a human being can experience, full of lazy days and lemonade and days at the beach rather than ominous indications of the hottest summer temperatures recorded since such things started being tracked. It doesn’t matter if the reality of a summer is old folks dropping dead like flies and that setting one foot outside an air-conditioned bunker is an exercise in lunacy–a well-executed summer song still makes a listener wish the season could last forever.

Chicago’s Unicycle Loves You has unleashed just such a summer song with “Mirror, Mirror.” Mining the same vein as recent albums by The Vivian Girls and Dum Dum Girls, on “Mirror, Mirror,” Unicycle Loves You combine a sixties girl-group vibe with lo-fi indie rock aesthetics. Bassist/vocalist Nicole Vitale purrs for the listener to “open up to new sensations, in the summertime” over a lazy backbeat while all sorts of extraneous noises and textures drop in and out of the mix. It’s in the same ballpark as the underappreciated dream-popsters Joy Zipper, mixing upbeat sentiments with an undercurrent of nostalgic dreaminess.

Unicycle Loves You coalesced in 2006 around the core of guitarist/vocalist Jim Carroll (not the person who died, just one bearing the same name) and Vitale. The two generally split vocal duties evenly, but “Mirror, Mirror” is definitely a showcase for Vitale. Her vocals hit just the right note to convey the feeling of a summer day, where the competing impulses to get out and do something or just relax and enjoy a perfect day duke it out.

“Mirror, Mirror” is the title track of Unicycle Loves You’s self-produced sophomore album, due to drop on September 7th courtesy of Highwheel Records.