Album Review: Craft Spells - Idle Labor

Justin Vallesteros, the Californian behind the nostalgic bedroom pop of Craft Spells, is ostensibly just another kid mining the back catalogues of The Smiths, The Pastels, The Wedding Present et al. at a time when C86-aping acts are popping up on every Brooklyn street corner. That's right: in case you missed the memo, some twenty-five years on from the cassette tape that launched a genre, a revival of all things jangly appears to be doing so all over again, and managing to stand out from the throwback crowd is no mean feat. But just as labelmates Wild Nothing and Beach Fossils succeeded in doing so last year, Vallesteros appears to have followed suit on his debut LP in the kind of subtle and understated manner patient music fans are bound to love. For, while many a debut record released this year will likely trump Idle Labor for noise and showy fanfare, few will succeed in charming and impressing as quietly and effectively as these eleven tracks.

For all his wry stylistic nods to bygone NME cover stars, Vallesteros' winning formula is achingly simple: much like the aforementioned Jack Tatum (Wild Nothing) and Dustin Payseur (Beach Fossils), the 22 year-old displays a firm grasp of the essentials of songwriting, resulting in a half-hour neatly packed full of smart and snappy lovesick tunes. Pre-album mp3 tasters ‘Party Talk’ and ‘After The Moment’ may seem simple and unassuming, but they’re impossible to shake. ‘Beauty Above All’, meanwhile, is possibly about as perfectly sweet as three-and-a-half minutes of pop music can get nowadays. The guy’s got versatility to boot: ‘Ramona’ glides along on the kind of groove you might expect Jamie xx to cook up, while ‘Given The Time’ and the aptly-named ‘Scandinavian Crush’ tip a hi-hat or two towards The Radio Dept. Indeed, the Stockton native inserts such slight variety into Idle Labor, he only really gets jangly in the straightforward manner one would expect from a member of the Captured Tracks fold two tracks from the end, on ‘You Should Close The Door’

Don't go expecting Idle Labor to send shockwaves of excitement through the record-buying public – if there even is such a thing any more. It’s by no means an earth-shattering collection of songs, but rather one that will hopefully generate enough impressed whispers to introduce a very fine talent to attentive ears. This is a name that's well worth keeping an eye on.