Jonas Sees in Color - S/T

Jonas Sees in Color
Jonas Sees in Color
Glassnote Entertainment

If you steal one album from your little sister this year, it should be Jonas Sees in Color’s debut. The Greensboro six-piece are not your everyday gauged, blonde-streaked, star-and-heart-tattooed power poppers (although they are most of those things), but a group of Southern rocker kids who actually have a grasp on writing pop music. Of course, the album is laden with a handful of post Emo howls and the lyrics do tend to live up to the clichés of effeminate teenage apathy (“if you can’t take the weather, you can take my sweater with the loose threads”) and their music really is closer to “cute” than “kick ass,” but on their self-titled LP they rarely manage to go more than a song or two without hitting on a brilliantly delightful pop tune in the vain of Butch Walker. “Outside These Walls” is an arena-ready sing-along, “For the Fences” and “Devil in the City” are endearingly sassy tales from poetically-inclined youth, and “Avalanche” and “West Coast” are tailor-made for long drives through country roads or rounding third with your sweetheart on a field of warm summer grass. Izzy Cihak