The Red Vines is the latest project by the musical mastermind of Ryan Finnerin. Peppered with cameos by totally excellent local musicians, the record gains extra spice. It has lush acoustic guitar hooks and insanely catchy pop vocals complete with sugary reverbed tambourines.

We start Everyday Needles For Electromagnetic Lovers off with a pop ditty called Electromagnetic Lover. I must first applaud the acoustic guitar work here. The guitars are double-tracked and panned hard, as well as played expertly. Completely in sync with one another. The drums come in with confidence and motion, propelling the song along. The lead in the right-ish channel makes the song a touch alt-country which works for me. And any song that makes an allusion to vinyl is good by me (on a random note: there’s a song by Nashville’s The Features which totally reminds me of this song - their old song was called 33 1/3 and it was about a guy whose girlfriend likes his record collection more than him). And props to the art designer, Zach Hobbs, who did a splendid job topping the CD off with an image of a vinyl record. Pretty clever.

The second song is The Last Sing-A-Long-Song. The vocal harmonies smell like our good friends, Jellyfish. I am loving it. The cut-time section is perfect and is complemented by a wonderfully placed (in the mix) cello.

The Nameless begins with a nasty awesome Oberheim/Moog-sounding synth that reminds me of The Beatles’ Maxwell’s Silver Hammer. It’s sort of out of place, but I am totally digging the randomness of it.

I don’t really know what it is about this record. It definitely reminds me of the summer of 2002. Not in a retro, derivative way, but relative to the stylings of what I was listening to at the time. It was when I was listening non-stop to Grandaddy, Guided By Voices and Build To Spill.

An interesting note is that this record was wonderfully mastered at Kitchen Mastering by Brent Lambert who is pretty active on the TapeOp message boards. If you are into home audio and haven’t been on their boards, you must do yourself a favor and get educated.

You can buy The Red Vines’ latest record at their label’s site for $8 plus shipping. They will also be playing in Washington DC on July 26th at the Honfleur Art Gallery.