Saturday Looks Good to Me

If you've gotta be melancholy, you may as well be sunny about it. This 10-member (give or take) chamber pop mob, founded by Lovesick's Fred Thomas as a sort of one-band Elephant Six collective, began life intermingling Brian Wilson and upbeat lo-fi. But as the years passed and lives fell apart and nobody worth a good goddamn became famous, Saturday Looks Good to Me sobered, keeping that '60s warmth and winsomeness but applying it to slower, richer songs. The new songs tick between cheery but sad and sad but cheery, and they work equally well whether your goal is to make out or take a nap. Expect viola, a xylophone and a bevy of vocalists to round-robin in the spotlight. Expect them to herald perfectly a springtime that teems with promise but probably won't amount to much for any of us.