Pretty much the first thing anyone ever says about Smith Westerns is that the band members are young. We're gonna start there too. But instead of the usual "Can you believe these kids are 19 and 20 and they make massively melodic power-pop?" let's make something clear: Dye It Blonde, the Chicago four-piece's second album, sounds tremendous, period.
It's youthful — "Weekends are never fun unless you're around too," yelps the chorus of the opening track — but its sprightly exuberance is mostly a sweetener to pop-rock so shrewdly constructed and melodically ambitious that it's hard to believe these kids — sorry, dudes — picked up instruments only a few years ago. For Smith Westerns, age isn't a liability — it's an exclamation point.
"Weekend," the opening cut on Dye It Blonde, slams from a spacey twinkle into a racing intro. Rhythm guitars ping-pong through a bouncy pop chord progression. And suddenly we're halfway through the chorus, as singer Cullen Omori, along with about 50 other layers of his voice, croons and a bloopy guitar spirals up to the moon. But instead of collapsing under all this ambition, "Weekend" and most other Smith Westerns' songs are so well built that there's absolutely no risk of collapse.
