The follow-up to 2016's party-starting City Club, Natural Affair sees the Growlers continue to apply coats of glossy paint to their punchy blend of surfy guitar rock and '80s-leaning synth-pop. Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas helmed the band's last effort, and while he sits this one out, frontman/producer Brooks Neilsen follows his lead with a tight 12-song set that pairs studio snap and sizzle with the sleek, deep-water grooves that the band has been honing since making the leap from lo-fi "beach-goth" to psych-tinged ...
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The follow-up to 2016's party-starting City Club, Natural Affair sees the Growlers continue to apply coats of glossy paint to their punchy blend of surfy guitar rock and '80s-leaning synth-pop. Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas helmed the band's last effort, and while he sits this one out, frontman/producer Brooks Neilsen follows his lead with a tight 12-song set that pairs studio snap and sizzle with the sleek, deep-water grooves that the band has been honing since making the leap from lo-fi "beach-goth" to psych-tinged pre-dawn funk. This time around, Neilsen and guitarist Matt Taylor are joined by longtime Growlers touring members Brad Bowers and Richard Gowen, along with Circles Around the Sun's Adam MacDougall and Dan Horne, and the band just clicks. Commencing with the propulsive title cut, a shimmying slice of dark summer pop that coalesces around a meaty hook that opines "Boys will be boys and get away with murder/Girls should rule the world, it's true," Natural Affair cycles through themes of modern love and shifting social norms with wine-drunk half-opened eyes that see more than they're letting on. That easy Cali-funk vibe grows darker on the menacing "Social Man," a backroom disco romp that's as danceable as it is unsettling, and the languid, nostalgia-laden "Foghorn Town," but for the most part, Natural Affair leaves the lights on. Late-album outliers "Truly" and "Tune Out" take a detour into florid Baroque pop, but the band brings everything to a red solo cup-raising crescendo on the spirited closer "Die and Live Forever," a bona fide Growlers anthem that achieves a sort of ramshackle grace in its quest for oblivion. ~ James Christopher Monger, Rovi
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