Again and Again

One listen to the opening track of Brilliant Colors' second album will have some listeners checking the recording and copyright dates in the liner notes. Singer-songwriter Jess Scott and her compatriots have dialed back the noisy edge of 2009's Introducing Brilliant Colors and struck upon a note-perfect evocation of the deliberately minimalist pop shimmer of '80s UK acts like The Flatmates and Shop Assistants. All strummy electric guitars and shyly girlish vocals, these songs make plain what the trio's previous releases (including a recent string of singles produced by fellow Bay Area indie phenom Ty Segall) hinted at: Brilliant Colors specialize in a particular strain of winsome -- some may even say twee -- indie pop that makes a virtue of their deliberately limited range. Over and out in just over 28 minutes, these 10 songs arguably start to feel a touch samey by the end of side two (a common problem with their forebears' albums as well), but savored one by one, evocative tunes like "How Much Younger" and "Hitting Traffic" are as utterly charming as indie pop gets right now.