Bright Leaves is raw enough to sound different from the usual indie pop love note. Young Presidents is as energetic as the record gets, but despite its upbeat drum patterns and pop-laden hooks, it never abandons the insistently smooth vocals of Philip Dickey.

While Fly By Wire isn’t reinventing the wheel with tracks like Loretta and Cover All Sides (which is very much like The Beatles), the record is eminently listenable from front to back and distinctively catchier than some of their peers. Even when Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin aren’t trying to outdo everybody around them, they’re recording more appetizing records.

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That being said, the album really picks up with Confidence, which is a beautiful track and one of the record’s more high-energy songs. Really, if Confidence was the opening track, the entire thing would be fantastic from the get-go.

If any album ever defined the term “slow burner,” Carrier is it. But it’s worth it. The end of the album is stronger than the beginning. Dodos’ strength, at least from where I sit, lies in the way they layer their instruments. Relief is a great example, with quickly-plucked arpeggios and vocals working together to create a fantastic whole. Not unlike its oddly weak opening track, I think The Ocean is a weak ending — not a bad song, but just an inappropriately placed track. But Destroyer and Death would make tremendous closing counterparts.

In some ways, Destroyer is the most high-energy track on the record, and Death is certainly the most somber (it could probably make the boys in The National weep). Side by side, the tracks are powerful, but ending the album with a one-two punch like that would have been truly ballsy.

The odd pacing indicates that The Dodos aren’t too interested in predictability, and they’d rather put the power of the album in their performance and emotional capacities. In that sense, Carrier is a tremendous success. It’s unusual for a record from Dodos, but it’s tremendously surprising and moving.

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Put a Light On is another great example of Generationals’ sound, but it wouldn’t sound out of place on an iPhone commercial. (Actually, that’d make a great iPhone commercial.) Curiously, since Generationals are clearly not keen in staying in one place, I Never Know has more in common with Whole Lotta Love era Led Zeppelin than it does Vampire Weekend. And I adore I Used to Let You Get to Me, which is catchy and angry and proud and melodic all at the same time.

There aren’t many moments on this record that aren’t pure fun. Let me put it to you this way: If I was putting together a barbecue with some friends right now (which I am) and was putting together some music for it (and of course I am), then Heza would be featured in nearly its entirety (and it will be).

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