Saturday Looks Good To Me

At first glance, Saturday Looks Good To Me is just another one of those thin-skinned post-collegiate music collectives who dress head to toe in Salvation Army chic and send 18-year-old tarts home to scribble in their journal. Gag me with a seven-inch, right? Wrong. SLGTM is far greater than the sum of its parts. The band's leader, Fred Thomas, is a minor legend in the Ann Arbor underground, self-recording and releasing reams of music and pasting together one makeshift backup band after the next, his projects running the gamut from scream-o hardcore (Lovesick) to bluegrass-touched folk (Flashpapr). He seems to have settled into leading SLGTM, a band that satisfies his bent for Phil Spector-era grooves and blindingly moving melodies. The band's recently released All Your Summer Songsis the most relevant recording Polyvinyl Records has issued since the days of Braid. Its poignant narratives imbue ambulance sirens, paper airplanes and New Year's Eve parties with a spiritual depth that leaves the band few peers. A relentless touring machine, Thomas recently lost most of his regular band (which can include up to nine people) and is currently playing with a trio. It's further evidence of his indomitable mission to spread his message--a message that actually means something. And the world needs a lot more of that.