SXSW Records

The High Dials

You know you're graying when the youth-in-hindsight pop songs you grew up with start sounding eerily familiar rather than merrily melodic. So it is with Anthems for Doomed Youth and its 2011-by-way-of-1967 as reimagined in 1985 musical outlook. The High Dials' melancholic psych-pop provides a particularly rich canvas on which to ruminate about the ghosts of past loves, the Montreal quintet beginning with "Teenage Love Made Me Insane," a flanged-out thesis statement looking back with bemused incredulity at the personality-shaping powers of unrequited affection. "I'm Over You (I Hope It's True)" dredges up contradictory emotions with a longing backbeat, while "Mysterio" elevates an elusive pursuit to sylphlike status with a Byrds-style rave-up. Weaker songs cause the concept to drag, "The Rich Die Too ..." becoming the less-nuanced child of the Monkees' "The Door Into Summer." Then again, what would youth be without dramatic overreach? (Fri., 10pm, Easy Tiger Patio)