The High Dials

Anthems for Doomed Youth (Rainbow Quartz)

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)

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This article appears in March 18 • 2011.

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Greg Beets was born in Lubbock on the day Richard Nixon was elected president. He has covered music for the Chronicle since 1992, writing about everyone from Roky Erickson to Yanni. Beets has also written for Billboard,Uncut, Blurt, Elmore, and Pop Culture Press. Before his digestive tract cried uncle, he co-published Hey! Hey! Buffet!, an award-winning fanzine about all-you-can-eat buffets.