It’s easy enough to dig up a slice of the past and make it your own. You might even say that the record industry these days consists of just that but, with that said, it’s not often that a band can draw so heavily on the past and still sound fresh and Relick are so fresh that they appear to be powered by equal quantities of morning dew and midday sunshine.
It does help that singer Amber Nicholson has a voice that is more French pop than you would expect of an American with her coquettish charm always evident. The six songs on their “Twin House” EP have an endearing mix of quirkiness and the reverential with the band’s apparent affection for both late sixties west coast pop, the pure pop of England in the seventies and nineties power pop making for a melodic sonic concoction. Take, for example, “I Wouldn’t Lie To You”. This song, with its candy coated contrivances liberated from both The Hush Sound and Mike Leander, just cries out to be packaged into one those delightfully antiquarian seven inch vinyl things and, if I had to choose the B-side, I would select the glorious pseudo psychedelic grandeur of “Another life”.
There is undoubted commercial appeal in these six songs for, even in these depressing times, melody will always make things seem better. Relick, may they be blessed with success, make things seem better.