Oxford Collapse doesn’t waste any time getting you to like their album. From its first frantic minute — one that consists entirely of each member taking turns at the line, “I can’t remember things/I just don’t know what to do” — BITS turns twitchy guitars and compulsive drumming into a head rush of amped-up energy. It’s catchy, it’s punchy, it’s a decade’s worth of post-punk revival rolled into 30-some minutes. The risk that comes with releasing a fourth album loaded with accessible indie rock is, of course, sulky Brooklyn Vegan commentators passing off the trio’s songwriting skills as unremarkable. But they would be wrong. Although anchored by focused repetition, BITS is full of nuances — a bit of baroque there, a funky sound pattern there — that culminate with ‘Children’s Crusade’. Melding the multiple-part harmonies of Fleet Foxes with the unhinged vigor of No Age, the song essentially combines two of Sub Pop’s most heralded albums of the year. It’s also the sound of being alive, a hard-to-pin-down electricity that courses throughout BITS.
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