It's easy to romanticize our memories of childhood. When you were a kid you never just went outside on a sunny day and walked around and thought about how novel it all was, you dashed outside and jumped on your bicycle and rode on it really fast darting into driveways and ramping off of curbs and you felt the wind in your hair and sometimes you felt so awesome and free that there was no way for you to realize how awesome and free you felt until you're old and reminiscing over what it was like to be young, awesome, and free.

By albums end, Fang Island's music sounds like what it feels like to remember what it was like to feel young, awesome, and free.

This is one of those bands that's best described to people who haven't listened to by rattling off other similar bands that the person probably hasn't listened to, which is to say that Fang Island is one of those bands that will totally baffle and amaze first time listeners but pretentious douchebags like me will sit there and tear into the seemingly endless list of modern bands that seem to influence them.

So, to get on with it, Fang Island sounds like a loving combination of Yeasayer, Ponytail, and Parts & Labor, which is to say that it's noise-math rock with some subtle world music influences. I kind of love it. I've never been the kind of person to think a band sucks just because it sounds kind of like everything else, and for the most part Fang Island doesn't sound like everything else just because it sounds like so many different things that it is undeniably itself.

There are bloggers out there who say things like "Fang Island doesn't sound like anything I've heard before" to which I say you really need to listen to more music. Seriously. That's just sloppy and sad. This is a fun record, gorgeously textured and just a joy to listen to... but it's not something new, it's just a different combination of existing styles that relies on the emotion of its music to really grab you, and there is no lack of it on any of these tracks. For that I can't help but recommend it.