The Stratford 4: Love & Distortion

It should come as little surprise that The Stratford 4 singer Chris Streng was once in a band with musicians who went on to form Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Streng and his former partners all make music steeped in British guitar rock stretching from the release of The Jesus And Mary Chain's Psychocandy to the moment before Oasis' Definitely Maybe hit the charts. And both wear their influences proudly, even while avoiding bland imitation of a sound first made a decade and a continent away from their San Francisco home. With its effortless command of the shoegazer vocabulary, its ability to join melody to My Bloody Valentine-inspired sonic depth, and Streng's is-it-Yank-or-is-it-Brit singing voice, The Stratford 4 could pass as the original item. But the group's second album, the aptly titled Love & Distortion, summons enough winning moments to make comparisons a secondary concern. Listeners in a hurry to get to the good stuff should start with "She Married The Birds," a timeless single that cradles swelling hooks and oversized romantic notions in layers of feedback. Elsewhere, the band displays an uncanny knack for making memorable songs out of gimmicks. The slow-building "Twelve Months" clicks through a calendar's worth of memories, but the album's heart belongs to "Telephone," an eight-minute song built around the conversation of a despondent, reclusive hipster and his wisdom-dispensing mother as they trade music and drug preferences on a lonesome Saturday night. "There's more to this life than The Stratford 4," goes one piece of maternal advice. Fair enough, but Love & Distortion's best moments make that easy to forget for a minute or two.