Highway Review

Lennon Kloser writes, plays and produces most of this himself, and the technical standard is high for a debut made at this scale. The sound is a careful reconstruction of a specific idea of the past: chorused guitars, warm analogue keys, a drum sound with plenty of room on it, and vocals doubled and drenched in the way that a very particular Australian psychedelic act made popular a decade earlier. The debt is obvious enough to be distracting on several tracks.

Where he gets clear of it the record is genuinely good. Like I Never Left opens with real swing, Have U Seen Her carries the best chorus here, and there are two or three further moments across the twelve songs where a hook arrives that could belong to anyone. The writing is the weak point. The lyrics are a run of familiar images about driving, being young and losing someone, and none of them lands a specific detail. Pleasant, well made, easy to put on, and derivative in a way that a second album will need to solve.