Pitchfork

Oxford Collapse's "Please Visit Your National Parks" is one of my favorite purely indie rock tunes of the past few years, in part because it plays to the things that indie rock does best: huge, soaring choruses, ringing guitars, a sense of wide-eyed joy, making the most of the simplest chord progression. They're the ingredients that have driven the best guitar-based indie from the Feelies to R.E.M. to Built to Spill. It was such a great song, in fact, that you worried a bit that the band would never top it. Well, "The Birthday Wars", from their upcoming album Bits, certainly doesn't reach the same level, but it's promising just the same, hitting some of the same notes in half the time, getting in and then out and leaving you wishing for more. 

MP3:> Oxford Collapse: "The Birthday Wars"
[from Bits; due 08/05/08 on Sub Pop]