The Changes

Today Is Tonight

Drama Club Records

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Timing isn't really the Changes' thing, as the title of their debut album suggests. For one thing, Today Is Tonight arrives more than a year after the Chicago indie-pop quartet took its star turn as the only unsigned band at the 2005 Lollapalooza festival. And the Changes are still churning out shiny '80s prom gems at a time when indie audiences have already been bombarded with armies of stylish new-New Wavers. Fortunately, the Changes stick out from the angular-guitar-and-skinny-ties crowd by emphasizing echo-laden pop hooks borrowed from the dorkier representatives of the Wedding Singer era. At times the funky guitars and vocal harmonies even recall blue-eyed soul dweebs Hall and Oates, but here that's definitely a good thing. Opener "When I Wake" is catchy, up-tempo soft rock, doused with reverb and sparkly synths, while lonely lament "Water of the Gods" smoothes out a Motown beat. Sure, guitarist-songwriter Dave Rothblatt's lyrics aren't always as sleek as the production: "Don't wanna lose when I can win," Darren Spitzer rasps on moody, Cure-like "Such a Scene". But such lapses are the exception, not the rule. Today Is Tonight introduces the Changes as a new Chicago band that might still actually be worth listening to tomorrow.

-- Marc Hogan