The Needy Visions are all about fun, and goddamn do I wish I had their latest homonymous release at the beginning of summer. Kind of like how every Hold Steady song has me drinking on top of water towers, the Visions have me envisioning summer scenarios better than I know how to feel them, and I’m already beginning to miss what’s barely gone.
The vinyl album starts with “Weymouth,” a jolty Neil Young guitar line atop a degenerates anthem of “We’re just a bunch of losers hangin’ out,” but tucked into a crazy, infectious, blissful throwback-pop style loosely glazed in a bedroom sheen. Frontman Dan Shea is talking about “jumpin’ in the ocean,” “gettin’ drunk, gettin’ stoned,” and pretty much everything else that fulfills the clichéd notion of rock-and-roll excess. Or just plain awesome living.
And even when the songs push past the pop charm and get downright grimy, as with the spiraling confusion of the guitars in “At Risk Youth,” the band are still compelling in some totally basic way that I have yet to understand. And don’t really want to.
