Short Round
“Language”
(Asian Man Records)
Short Round puts forth ten tracks of punchy electric pop on their debut album “Language.” All ten songs (really a Short Round, as they clock in at just under 28 minutes) are cleverly written and well-constructed, hewing close to the melody so that hooks are mostly unnecessary and included only occasionally. As you might expect from an album titled “Language,” lyrics take center stage here. Singer Jason Thinh wrote all but one of the songs on this album, and his writing reveals a mature outlook on the world. On “Molehill,” he urges a friend to put his problems into proper perspective, and on “Assumptions,” the final cut from “Language,” he shows a wisdom beyond his years as he gently explains to an old girlfriend that, sometimes, relationships just don’t work out. An album that is easily worth the short bit of time it asks.
