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They manage to make the grandest songs imaginable seem like they were composed with only you in mind.
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While the sound of this Tennessee five-piece is hardly shimmering with originality, few have imitated those sunny falsettos and sweet'n'sad melodies quite so irresistibly.
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Memphis is the most thrilling debut album since the Apples in Stereo's Fun Trick Noisemaker and should be embraced by anyone who likes pop music that sounds small but thinks big. These kids truly have some magic in them.
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All that really matters for the moment is that their debut album is an unqualified success, a concise and perfectly-presented collection of first-class pop music.
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MojoClocking in at under half-an-hour, the album proves a short, sweet delight. [Sep 2010, p.92]
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The a-ha moments in the archaeological game Magic Kids sets up on Memphis are fun precisely because the songs are so unassuming in their saccharine one-dimensionality.
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For all its sonic worldliness, Memphis is more on the level of early, good-time Beach Boys records like Surfin' USA and Little Deuce Coupe.
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My problem with the rest of Memphis, then, is simple: it too often falls into retreading thoroughly explored pop without truly making it their own.
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Memphis, their debut LP, bottles all of that up with remarkable skill, but often to disappointing effect. Its many flourishes are much more satisfying than its songs, each dissolving on contact no matter how much buoyancy or sugar they boast for stretches.
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The Thrills meets The Polyphonic Spree--in a good way!
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Memphis sextet Magic Kids started out in the midst of the city's celebrated garage-punk scene, but you'd hardly know it on the basis of this airheaded and obsessively nice-ified debut album.
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Q MagazineThe magic isn't totally absent, but this self-conscious debut falls just short of the hype they've garnered on US blogs. [Oct 2010, p.111]
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Magic Kids do pull off a winner with Summer, a sultry delight of abounding strings and tropical strums that, sadly, sounds out of place with the obvious eye winks scattered throughout. Memphis may borrow from such an imaginative time period, but their explorative range remains very limited.
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Under The RadarA squashy gust of falsetto, horns, and strings buttress the swaying keyboard popper "hideout," but like many of these tracks, it's a little too twee. [Summer 2010, p.79]
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Dec 20, 2010As tight and well-rehearsed as any camp band, the Kids' real magic lies in their unsullied embrace of 1960s pop and garage rock with a modern teen sensibility.
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Too much of Memphis sounds like a pale copy of a much more impressive band, and Magic Kids really need to find their own, less cloying, voice if they're going to produce something worthwhile.