Diiv
Oshin

Diiv is a brutalization of "Dive". "Dive" was one of the epic outbursts of the vintage Cobain, to which Zachary Cole, previously a guitarist in the modest and indeed gentle Beach Fossils, seems to draw inspiration in form more than in substance. "Oshin" is the debut of the American quartet and it will be surprising, given the references just laid out, to discover that the leap, here, is made across the ocean.

The basic idea is that of a guitar Pop halfway between The Wake and jangle C86, all filtered through a constructionist perspective - the decade when Post Punk was deconstructionist is light years away - of fillings and flashes of clear guitar playing, not too dissimilar to what the Chameleons did around the mid-eighties.

At the center of it all the songs, harmonic jewels never over the top, elegant Pop packaging, wrapped in their most appropriate format: the short duration and repetition. Where "How Long Have You Known" or "Wait" are the singles that every relic of the English golden age should memorize, it's also interesting to note the vaguely kraut construct of tracks like "Oshin", "(Druun)" (and its reprise) or "Air Conditioning" as a testament to a command of means, even before expressive, anthological, which, in times of hauntology and mainstreaming of musical libraries, is not insignificant at all.

Captured Tracks of Brooklyn puts its face on it, a forward-thinking label concerning revisionist Pop craftsmanship, positioning itself as one of the loudest voices in this 2012, without wanting to go back to Wild Nothing, just think of the very recent work of the Holograms.