Ears Wide Open: The Nova Darlings

Kevin Bronson on January 7th, 2016

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The Nova Darlings are a self-professed “band of sweaty white boys from Los Angeles.” They are also music students at USC, doing their best to sound not-so-collegiate on their EP “Songs for Felix,” self-released in November. Not that the quintet dumb things down at all: Their five-song debut, a melange of loud/soft indie-rock, punk and Americana, reveals sophisticated songwriting and sharp-witted lyrics, delivered at times with angsty ferocity. The songs, produced and engineered by Grant Ellman, are the work of singer-guitarist Jack DeMeo, singer-bassist Mackin Carroll, keyboardist-vocalist Cooper Bell, guitarist Larry Scanniello and drummer Carter Couron. “Styrofoam,” with its spoken-word verses, works as kind of a dual metaphor — a statement about plastic people and memories that won’t go away: “I just hope we’re still around to to talk to our kids about Jesus and plastic CD cases,” Carroll confesses. The EP ends with “I Wake Up,” reminiscent of indie-rockers like Canadian luminaries the Weakerthans, and “Everything Is Temporary” continues the Nova Darlings’ theme of permanence. “It’s just a matter of time / until everything turns to dust,” Carroll sings. Except maybe Styrofoam and CD jewel cases.

||| Stream: “Styrofoam” and “I Wake Up”