Saturday Looks Good To Me: Fill Up The Room

Since 2000, the indie-pop collective Saturday Looks Good To Me has been building on a foundation of decades-old teen-friendly 45s, aiming to be a more literate, sophisticated version of a prefab '60s vocal group. For Fill Up The Room, bandleader Fred Thomas builds so high that the album teeters, in sometimes off-putting, sometimes thrilling ways. "When I Lose My Eyes" belongs in the latter camp: For nearly seven minutes, it maintains a breathless pace, driven by clattering drum rolls and the kind of rapid strumming that The Wedding Present would've killed for back in '86. Then the band adds horns and, later, crushing metallic guitar, all the while treating pop songwriting like a giant-sized game of Jenga.