Sub Pop Records

BITS is album number four for Brooklyn’s Oxford Collapse, but it’s a first for them in many ways. Some of those ways will be immediately apparent to those of you who’ve followed their raucous, boyish exploits since their 2006 Sub Pop debut Remember the Night Parties, or from their earlier efforts. Their charming lack of guile, combined with a capable and focused aim towards the better of the ‘80s college-rock cognoscenti and Trouser Press favorites, has made for music of a mindset that has found its way into backyards and across rooftops all over the city.

Much of Oxford Collapse’s earlier output reflected an almost preternatural awareness of this mindset and was/is excitable and bounding against prison walls of their own device. BITS corrects for time and experience, and shows a band artistically riding its own peaks. The tension is still present in their three-way interplay (listen to them firing off of each other, squealing out of control at the end of “Back of the Yards”) but the direction and presence in this set is open, flowing against anything they’ve done before. It’s the sound of fun turning into purpose, of a great band writing and playing their best songs, and knowing how great that feels.

Inspired by the ethic of the Minutemen and the sense of tireless work embodied by that trio and the rest of the SST Records roster, Oxford Collapse wrote material beyond what they would need for BITS-—30 songs by their count. Surplus tracks recorded during these sessions went to the “Spike of Bensonhurst” 7” for Flameshovel, the Hann-Byrd 12” for Comedy Minus One, and were taken on tour this year in the U.S. and in England with…