Uni Boys - Buy This Now! (2023)

“Buy This Now!” is the new album by American rock band Uni Boys. 12 new songs of love and loneliness in the modern world using jangly new wave glory guitars and west coast classic pop melodies. Recorded skillfully and completely analog by Michael and Brian D’Addario of The Lemon Twigs at their studio in the East Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. Beach Boys harmonies & a myriad of keyboards were added to the Uni Boys Power-Pop and Rock'N'roll path giving Buy This Now! a fresh new slant.

Buy This Now!, the fourth full-length record by Los Angeles’s Uni Boys, largely works within the same creative mode as its predecessors: The quartet’s founding members Reza Matin and Noah Nash split songwriting duties 50/50 across 12 nervy power pop tracks packed with nimble chord progressions and retro riffage. What’s changed is the execution. While the bulk of their past work was home-taped onto Tascams and laptops, lending a rustic edge to the mix, the Boys ventured east to record the new material with Michael and Brian D’Addario: fraternal frontmen of The Lemon Twigs and noted Todd Rundgren disciples. Tracks like “I’m Alright” and “Two Years” slightly de-emphasize lead guitar to create room for subtle flourishes of piano and organ, making their choruses pop with even greater contrast.

The record leads with best effort, opening with standout single “Let’s Watch a Movie,” a surprisingly domestic celebration of deciding to do nothing at the end of a rough workday. Complete with handclaps and four-part, Wilsonian harmonies, it’s pure bubblegum comfort food that goes down as easily as microwaved popcorn and a 90-minute rom com. “Hiding in My Home” takes Uni Boys’s devotion to leisure a step further, abandoning the outside world for a secluded life of naps and eating takeout in the nude. The accompanying instrumentation is anything but listless, though. A taut rhythm section ties trebly leads into tight knots, each bar concluding with a clever melodic twist.

Initially inspired by ‘70s power pop bands like Big Star, Milk ‘N’ Cookies and The Quick, Matin and Nash balance the flamboyant songraft of their forebears with the raw, rollicking ethos of even earlier rock ‘n’ roll. “Down to the City” bolts out of the gate with a kitschy stock riff pulled straight from a late ‘50s jukebox 45 before making a detour into its zig-zagging pre-chorus, punctuated by hairpin chord changes that arrive like sucker punches. Without betraying their gritty sensibilities, Uni Boys’s studio debut pushes their already-prodigious songwriting to be more ambitious and even hookier, an intricately-crafted soundtrack for lazy days spent loafing on the couch.