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KING OF PRUSSIA: Save The Scene [Kindercore]

Awash in reverberating melodies, hazy harmonies and many a channel-changing echo effect, the production on King Of Prussia’s debut album deserves its own separate instrument credit. And it gets it, sort of. The band gives a special liner-note shout out to the BR-1180, a portable digital recording studio on which Save The Scene’s tracks were laid down. Thankfully, King Of Prussia knows that stellar production without strong songs is just lipstick on a pig, and what the 26-minute Save The Scene lacks in running time, it makes up for in romantic traction. There’s an unbroken spell cast from the mod-paisley guitar line that opens “Spain In The Summertime” to the memorably modern Shins-isms of closing number “Physics Never Stood A Chance.” In between, “Misadventures Of The Campaign Kids” hits like a sledgehammer; “Shades Of Hippiedom,” with its bright Roger McGuinn strumming and ethereal David Crosby singing, kills two Byrds with one song; and “Cheerleaders” affixes an eerie half-life to what should be crisp handclaps. In fact, only “The Doctor And The Mathematicians” (seemingly space flotsam from Pink Floyd’s Meddle) fails to amount to much of anything. Coming not from its namesake Pennsylvania township but from Athens, Ga., King Of Prussia falls in line nicely behind the ’60s-psych-worshiping Apples In Stereo and Of Montreal. Whether this means frontman Brandon Hanick will be cross-dressing in 10 years and crooning about paying girls to hit other girls is anyone’s guess. But he and Kevin Barnes already have one thing in common: They each made one of the better records released in 2007. [www.kindercore.com]

—Noah Bonaparte Pais