Take The Kids Off Broadway

Foxygen\'s name might evoke a giggle. But after hearing the first track here (a stylistically sprawling nod to ancestral icons like the Stones, the Kinks, and early Modern Lovers) and then the second track (which sounds like The Fresh & Onlys, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, and Serge Gainsbourg partying down just before the song morphs into a Broadway show tune), you can see why the cheeky name just makes sense. Jon Rado and Sam France, musical partners since high school in mid-\'00s L.A., are encyclopedic musical wells, and you can imagine the fun they must have writing songs together. There are clanging guitars, \'60s organs, swinging \'70s horns, brazen melodic borrowing (\"As Tears Go By,\" \"Black Is Black,\" \"Hang on Sloopy,\" etc.), and vocal tones recalling—ready?—Jagger, Bowie, and Reed. It\'s almost too much for the brain and ears to process at once. So we recommend turning it (your brain) off, digging in for an amazing good time with *Take the Kids Off Broadway*, and marveling over the good things that come your way in life.

Foxygen began as two L.A. high school kids obsessed with the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and like their heroes they excel at mixing and matching 1960s and 70s rock touchstones into an appealing and highly referential collage.

At some point in the past four or five years, the line between pop music touched by the '60s and retro-sounding indie folk became so blurred that the two are now effectively one and the same.