THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “French Cassettes are a harmony-driven power-pop foursome from San Francisco. The quartet’s new LP Rolodex is filled with hooks and rooted in pop, layered with intricate vocal harmonies and counter-harmonies, inventive percussion, and every shade of clean and fuzzy guitars stacked up like an orchestra. These uncommonly majestic, esoteric pop forms serve as the perfect delivery service for Scott Huerta’s playful and verbose lyrics.
Rolodex’s lush and angular guitars — supplied by Mackenzie Bunch — are the tone-setting centerpiece, from the unfurling, harp-like strums on opener Dixie Lane to the shimmering dance riffs on Utah. For his part, Bunch credits Huerta for the band’s most unique qualities. “His vocal melodies and harmonies, those are my favorite parts of these songs,” he says. “They’re intricate, high-level stuff with a lot of counter-melodies.”
This might be most evident on the playful and cascading Isn’t Anyone?, a song that showcases Huerta as an impassioned crooner, a trickster poet and a one-man choir. Even on the album’s seemingly straightforward soul-pop closer So Good — which finds everyone grooving in unison over a Rob Mills quasi-breakbeat — there are myriad twists and sonic buried treasures to discover.”
