Saturday Looks Good To Me
All Your Summer Songs

When I think of the Sixties, I envision Happy Days, with Ricky Cunningham taking advice from Fonzie about girls, surfers to the tunes of the Beach Boys, flower children who wanted to make love not war, the immortal beats of "On the Road"; and still, feminists who no longer wanted to be just wives, students occupying universities and mingling with factory workers.

All this to say that, although I wasn't yet born, I have "lived" those years through images, sounds, words... The same can be said for the Saturday Looks Good To Me, a band hailing from an obscure (and mathematical) town in Minnesota, Ypsilanti: they weren't born yet either, yet their music is what today comes closest to the early Beach Boys sound and the Sixties pop in general. The band, led by Fred Thomas (formerly of His Name is Alive), consists of twelve members, who favor vintage and retro sounds (violin, organ, saxophone...). The title of this second album, "All Your Summer Songs", refers to the summer stories that each of us has experienced (or is experiencing) as teenagers; and the refined pop of the Magnetic Fields of 69 Love Songs.
There are twelve tracks, with an average duration of three minutes, featuring a dancey Abba-styled pop in "Underwater Heartbeat", the sixties and romantic sound of "The Sun Doesn't Want To Shine", "No Good With Secrets" where Fred Thomas plays the crooner, the energy of "Alcohol", Isobel Campbell from B&S in "Meet Me By the Water" and "Caught".

The album is very engaging, right from the first listens; and the choruses will hit you so hard that to get them out of your head, they’d have to shoot you. It doesn't bring anything new to the musical landscape; it doesn't discover anything, but it simply reinterprets, excellently, a certain genre of music. Not a milestone, but an album you’ll hardly remove from the stereo.