Sunny Era - Connection Lost

Twin Cities band The Sunny Era have been stealing some pages from Mojave 3's playbook, and that's all to the good. Mojave 3 and The Sunny Era have the kind of instant appeal that gets people to walk up to the counter and ask what's playing when their stuff is in the store disc changer, kind of like that scene in "High Fidelity" with the Beta Band. It's a delicate sound that nonetheless has momentum, with simple and direct drums driving clean guitars along straight lines while the melody rides aloft. Think tree-shaded parkways taken at 65 mph during a light rain and you'll get the vibe of the instrumentals like "Marked by Expectation" that break up the vocal numbers. Add in your best friend catching you up on his low-key but turbulent love life in the passenger seat and you've got tracks like "The Briefcase" if he or she can't seem to stay in any relationship for long, or "Heart of Chrome" if they're working out the kinks in a long-term commitment. Connection Lost skips along at a good clip, never straying too far into atmospherics, and never constricting the melodies. Who are The Sunny Era? It's hard to say; further research has only yielded up a Myspace profile with two friends, one of whom is the omnipresent Tom. With a debut effort this solid, don't expect it to stay that way for long. STEVE MCPHERSON.

1) Connection Lost
2) Saturn Blue Smoke
3) Marked By Expectation
4) Hope Beyond
5) The Briefcase
6) Night/Fall
7) One Hour to Go
8) Heart of Chrome
9) Greetings Dialogue One
10) Rules of the Game
11) Secrets Bought and Sold
12) Pictures of Your Older Life
13) The Casual Fix and the Shaped Wrong
14) It Was Nice Meeting You