Kevin Bronson on December 10th, 2012

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When I last caught up with Richie Follin, he was still playing in Cults (his sister Madeline is a member) while slowly working on his new project Guards. The Orange County native, now ensconced on the other coast, engaged in some those-were-the-days niceties about his old band the Willowz (last spotted in 2009) and looked a bit puzzled when I said I thought his late-2009 solo album should have gotten more attention. “I don’t know,” he said thoughtfully, “I just didn’t like my voice.” True enough, there’s little of his bluesy tenor in Guards’ material; his crisp vocals on the new Guards’ single “Silver Lining” sound the opposite of wounded – even brighter than he did on Guards’ subversively poppy 2011 EP or the single they released with White Iris. As winsomely beautiful retro-leaning pop goes, it’s better than most of what’s out there. Makes you think that the long incubation period for Guards’ debut “In Guard We Trust” (due Feb. 5) was worth the wait.

||| Stream: “Silver Lining” and “Coming True”:

||| Previously: Guards at SXSW 2012; “Resolution of One”

Photo by Olivia Malone

||| Also: After the jump, watch the “Silver Lining” video: