Kevin Bronson on July 22nd, 2014

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The most remarkable quality about “Simple,” the debut album out today from Los Angeles quintet Nightmare and the Cat, is how the colliding sensibilities of brothers Django and Sam Stewart find some sort of sonic detente. When the sons of Dave Stewart (Eurythmics) and Siobhan Fahey (Bananarama) relinquished their respective solo projects and got together over three years ago, it didn’t seem like a match made in heaven – with older brother Sam embracing Britpop-inspired guitar rock and young Django playing lothario-in-training as a bad-boy crooner. With bandmates Claire Ace, Scott Henson and Spike Phillips, though, the Stewarts have made a never-boring album that roars with bombast as often as it caresses with intimacy. “Simple” the rare major-label (Capitol) debut in which the bosses seemed not to insist that their charges just do one thing. So you have the arena-ready title track next to the lush, cascading “Goodbye So Many Times” next to scratchy, vaguely retro “Desert Heir.” Never lacking in sticky choruses or prickly romance, “Simple” is simply so much fun.

||| Stream: “Desert Heir”

||| Live: Nightmare and the Cat celebrate their album release Wednesday night with a headlining show at the Roxy.

||| Previously: “Undercover,” “Simple,” live in Chinatown, live at Gary Baseman’s House Party, “The Missing Year”