Eternal Summers: Silver

It’s unfair to place bands in competition with each other, but what the hell: In the battle of sunny, minimalist, female-fronted retro-post-punk 2010 debut albums, Eternal Summers’ Silver kicks the shit out of Best Coast’s Crazy For You. The Roanoke duo—Nicole Yun on guitar and Daniel Cundiff on drums—makes a virtue of its limitations, matching concise rhythms to noisy jangle in the mode of older stripped-down indie-pop acts like Pylon, Orange Juice, and Unrest. And while Best Coast’s members apparently think it’s funny to write the same song over and over, Eternal Summers range further with style and subject matter, evoking the simple pleasure of bouncing up and down on the short, snappy “Pogo” and then on the very next song, “Eternal,” stretching four or five notes into a soft, pretty contemplation of mystery. Silver isn’t perfect: Some of Eternal Summers’ music sputters for liftoff and never gets off the ground, and the dull album-closer “Bully In Disguise” sends listeners out on a bum note. But catchy, simple songs like “Safe At Home” and the exultant title track confirm the worldview that Yun and Cundiff express on Silver’s opener, “Disciplinarian.” Sometimes all a band needs is to exude authority.