Ears Wide Open: Smokescreens

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Smokescreens (Photo by David Kilgour)

It’s one thing to walk in the footsteps of legends who influenced your music. It’s quite another to have that person’s fingerprints on your new album.

So it is with L.A.’s Smokescreens, who sounded as if they’d just arrived on a (really) slow boat from 1980s New Zealand when they emerged in 2018 with their Slumberland Records release “Used to Yesterday.” They are unabashed devotees of the New Zealand sound, aka Kiwi pop, the unassuming but affecting style of melodic noise-pop and post-punk that found a home on the island nation’s Flying Nun Records in the ’80s and endures today. (This compilation, released in 2011, is a 40-track education.)

Smokescreens — currently comprised of Jake Sprecher, Brice Bradley and Chris Rosi — beckoned none other than David Kilgour of Kiwi legends The Clean to Los Angeles to produce their new album, “A Strange Dream.”

Lead track “Fork in the Road” chugs along merrily on jangling guitar, sure to induce crinkled smiles from anybody who found bliss in artists such as the Bats, Look Blue Go Purple and Verlaines back in the day — or anybody who finds unvarnished beauty in the DIY aesthetic today.

Kilgour not only produced the album but did the painting for its cover and photographed the band. “A Strange Dream,” which was engineered by Kyle Mullarky (Allah-Las, the Growlers, Tracy Bryant) is out Oct. 30.

||| Stream: “Fork in the Road”