First Look: Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin – “Let It Sway”

More often than not, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin is the best power-pop band in the world. Take “Everlyn,” a track custom-engineered by Nobel prize-winning scientists to boggle your mind: After that first magnificent chorus, all cymbals and falsetto, it dips back into verses but careens out into an early bridge — when the second, final chorus comes, it’s with the force of a freight train. Or an orgasm, but let’s not get awkward — the Boris boys have that one handled.

Let It Sway is the group’s third album and first produced by Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla, who adds his John Hancock: mid-range thicker than Sofia Vergara. The beefier sound gives weight to songs such as “Sink / Let It Sway,” whose barre chords burst out of speakers with the ferocious, adorable energy of hungry kittens. The band’s newfound chunkiness means leaving behind some of the feather-light agility of 2008’s still-great Pershing, though, and their goofier sensibilities (see: the vaguely, awkwardly homoerotic “All Hail Dracula”) sometimes miss the mark this time around. They’re best being sincere, as on lo-fi ballad “Stuart Gets Lost Dans Le Metro”: “Got a four-track on your bed… this is for us, not them.” Let It Sway is for you.

Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltins – “Sink / Let It Sway”: mp3

(Let It Sway is out now. The band plays Spaceland on Nov. 16 with fellow Walla wards The Lonely Forest.)