Anyone of a certain age who continues to hanker after 1980s Paisley-hued indie pop should know that The Umbrellas, one of San Francisco’s nostalgia-leaning young cult bands, deliver one rugged pop nugget after another.
The classic indie influences featured on their second album – the follow-up to their self-titled debut, from 2021 – may be mortgaged to the hilt to the likes of Belle and Sebastian, Orange Juice, The Pastels and Talulah Gosh (with a west-coast patchwork of The Byrds and The Monkees filtered throughout for exceptionally good measure), but there are barely any glitches when it comes to presentation.
The four-piece formed in 2018 around a communal hub of fellow musicians that gathered at their city’s famed Amoeba Music emporium, and from such modest ambitions (and, clearly, meticulous researching of UK indie bands) the group have gone from strength to strength.
It helps not only that they know the history of the music that has so clearly inspired them but also that they have developed over the past five or six years.
I feel we’re close now, Meghan, so I can speak freely. The right pitch is crucial in lifestyle hucksterism like yours
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While their DIY debut is, in the band’s own words, “sweet and earnest”, the new songs replace an often not-so-charming naivety with lean muscularity. What also assists are the male-female vocals of guitarist Matt Ferrara (a sonorous baritone) and Morgan Stanley (a silky, wistful singer whom bassist Nick Oka discovered at a Fourth of July karaoke party). Anyone into dreamy jangle pop? The Umbrellas have you covered.
