Pitchfork

Crack open the case to Oxford Collapse's latest, and you'll see a boy in swim trunks urinating outdoors (it's a perspective from behind), while the front cover features a pool-hardy protagonist tackling a giant inflatable Noid. The rest of the booklet includes similar pictures of young men who look to be partying way too early for the bleached-out early-afternoon daylight of the photos. Sub Pop has tons of this kind of levity in its back catalog, but it's always the label's dour or plainly emotional bands that get the attention.

Let's hope Oxford Collapse are the exception. There's something apt about these photos of men acting just a few years younger then they should-- on Remember the Night Parties OxC reach for a new, cleaned-up, larger sound while still clinging to the nervous pop-punk that got the band this far. You could even divide the record in half, side one where the group makes nice and gets ready for its close up, and then side two where it revisits its strengths.

It's on that second half where, save for "Please Visit Your National Parks", the album's best songs are located. The slow-motion build and airy vocals of "He'll Paint While We Play" betrays the boisterous chorus-hammering of "National Parks", laying on the melody until it wears out to the point of absurdity before making a triumphant return. Most of the songs are cut from a boisterous jangle and burping bass that's familiar to any fan of 1980s U.S. indie-- especially early R.E.M. To the band's credit, however, it breaks up the predictability with instrumental passages that carry grandiose, pastoral moods instead of just youthful exuberance. At times these shifts don't carry weight: The straightforward strum of "Loser City" recedes into formless post-rock drift just to return where it left off, "Return of Burno" oscillates between structure and aimlessness interminably, and a trumpet does nothing but announce the end of "Kenny Can't Afford It".

But then there's "Lady Lawyers", 100% pure throat-straining pop, but with bittersweet lyrics ("We're crackin' champagne because we became/ What we never thought we would"). "Let's Vanish" has the same strident sing-along quality, but finds an unexpected grace between its clawing melody and sterile echo. The resistance to growing up is a subtle but apparent theme throughout the record, as best friends roam the planet before getting old and vanishing ("Disappearing in stages makes no sound at all"), or someone faces off with the cops that give resistance but only just for laughs. On "Molasses", among the disc's best tracks, there's a run of biological nonsense lyrics and recorder solos before they impart a stern self-examining parting shot: "You know you're gonna get bored of it after a year/ With your animal ways, you'll fuck it up."

It's not just that the back half of the record cultivates familiar ground (as on previous OxC albums A Good Ground and the reckless-but-assured Some Wilderness), but that these songs' familiar emotions still sound fresh. That's thanks in part to a newfound grasp of minutiae that belies their casual delivery-- both an ear for the perfect detail (the homely melodica in "Forgot to Write") and a way with a phrase ("Finished ain't the same as through," from the same track). "You should be standing right next to me/ Instead of two feet in front of me," singer Michael Pace wails on "Please Visit Your National Parks", which could be a metaphor to lost or fallen friends or just an inner monologue when eyeing a girl at a show. But it makes two feet seem unbridgable-- as do the days between Monday and Friday in "Lady Lawyers". Only the young make such short segments of space and time seem so insurmountable, but that's part of what makes these ambitious post-collegiate drinking songs sound bigger than life. While Some Wilderness may have been an early peak for Oxford Collapse, you can't walk away from Remember the Night Parties thinking their best work isn't ahead of them. It's a torn and somewhat confused record, but a more decisive one wouldn't have suited them or their subject matter.