Pitchfork

Antarctica Takes It! self-released their debut CD-R The Penguin League eons ago in internet time-- way back in 2006-- so "New Music" might seem like a case of mislabeling as blatant as putting a "Latin" genre tag on a Los Campesinos! mp3. Despite some favorable blog mentions, however, the lo-fi Santa Cruz, Calif. indie-pop outfit's songs won't have been available in proper album form until their forthcoming release on How Does It Feel to Be Loved?, the UK club night turned record label that gave us 2006's winsome The Kids at the Club compilation. The new edition of The Penguin League was remastered in London, but album highlight "Circuits" thankfully hasn't gone south, retaining the demo version's warm heart and ramshackle charm.

Early Belle and Sebastian is an obvious influence, but rather than take Stuart Murdoch's chamber-pop confections and simply polish them up, 22-year-old songwriter Dylan McKeever achieves a similar effect through his own devices: piano, cello, glockenspiel, accordion, harmonica, female backing vocals, and eccentric percussion, all captured through a laptop's shitty internal microphone. Like Fujiya & Miyagi's fantastic "Collarbone", "Circuits" connects the knee bone to the thigh bone, here not as a route to fake-Japanese absurdity, but as an innocent expression of wonderment at even existing at all. It's also a shy come-on to a love the narrator has lost or, just as likely, hasn't met yet: "See the spark ignite with electricity/ I know there's light inside of you, inside of me," McKeever murmurs. OK, so it's not quite "The State I Am In". But that'd be stretching the definition of "New Music" pretty far, don't you think?

MP3:> Antarctica Takes It!: "Circuits"
[from The Penguin League; due 02/11/08 on How Does It Feel to Be Loved?]