Lilys

Because I think this D.C. band from the late 80s, and that lasted until the mid-2000s, is most known as being a more straightlaced My Bloody Valentine, one with a softer and more buoyant, cleareyed sound, I'm introducing them in this post with The 3 Way, one of their later albums and an example of their passion for inhabiting 60s psych-rock attitudes (think the Zombies) and mod frankness (think the Small Faces).



But all their work is imbued with a distinctly 90s half-lidded nonchalance, a laissez-faire slouch, and a sugary gleam, a hyperactive wit, that feels like a byproduct of Brit-pop influence, making them unmistakably of their own era.



Often, they're grouped with the Brian Jonestown Massacre or the Dandy Warhols, but I hear the Apples in Stereo in them more than those contemporaries; like them, Lilys is baroque and nerdy, tightly arranged and committed to the quirky earworm more than the sustained groove.