Ducktails – 'The Flower Lane' album review

Ducktails – 'The Flower Lane'

• Rated as: 4/5

Matt Mondanile’s fourth album as Ducktails is nothing new. But then that’s largely the point. This indie scenester doesn’t need to change the world, he just wants to make joyful tunes that quickly disperse into the great, miasmic cloud of American rock and pop.

A lot on ‘The Flower Lane’ sounds like woozy karaoke covers of soft rock classics, or the jangly indie-pop of Mondanile’s other band, Real Estate. But, with strings and horns appearing, the tone here is richer, funkier and more playful. On ‘Planet Phrom’, Mondanile sings of ‘making love with my alien wife’. It may come across like an album made for stoners, but ‘The Flower Lane’ is for anyone with an imagination, for whom the familiar still holds some magical appeal.