Tops: I Feel Alive review – masters of modern soft rock

Music critics will often complain about how someone has got stuck in a rut and failed to progress their sound, but then reserve the right for certain artists to stick to one aesthetic and keep making more or less the same album over and over again. Annoyingly inconsistent, but there you have it.

Tops are the latter kind of artists. Since their debut in 2012, the Montreal band have honed a particular and deeply satisfying sound where jangling indie-pop is told to calm down by sophisticated soft rock. The production on this fourth LP is somewhat cleaner than on earlier ones, and new keyboardist Marta Cikojevic adds some timbral breadth, but there is no need to for them to deviate very far from where they started. Singer Jane Penny has a wide expressive range, with glassy Chromatics-style ethereality giving way to Stevie Nicks-ish gusto; David Carriere’s choppy but ringing guitar tone recalls Steely Dan’s Walter Becker as well as nostalgic contemporary indie types such as Real Estate and Ariel Pink.

This sound is brought to bear on their strongest songs yet. Opener Direct Sunlight is a bright beam of white disco, with a hopping bassline and extended flute solo to evoke the near-deranged exultation of romantic love. Next up, the love in the title track, which on first listen is as equally euphoric, is actually tainted for being adulterous. And in the beautiful song following that, Pirouette, casual sex has become a nightmarish, alienating drag. Carriere’s voice is added into the mix for a duet on the verses here, suggesting neither party is having the best time. By Sad Ballads and Movies, we’re into numbed breakup woe.

But the mood rallies again on the Bette Davis Eyes synthpop of Colder & Closer, and perhaps the best and certainly the most straightforwardly joyous song here, Drowning in Paradise. Throughout, the tunes are as softly, strongly gorgeous as the dreamboats Penny seems to be batting her eyes at or crying over Polaroids of. Tops are now up there with Phoenix as the masters of modern soft rock – just don’t go changing.