embers of the group Creeper Lagoon have openly professed their love of Dinosaur Jr’s You’re Living All Over Me and Fugazi’s In on the Killtaker. This would lead one to believe that their second proper LP would sound more similar to a band like, say, Drive Like Jehu than the Dandy Warhols. You’d be wrong, though. This San Francisco quartet is closer to Courtney Taylor’s band than anything in the post-punk spectrum.


The group’s major label debut, Take Back the Universe..., is an unspectacular but pretty decent indie-pop record. The opener, “Chance of a Lifetime” is one of the few places CL “rock out”, with a chorus featuring plenty of guitar effects and aggressive drumming that makes you believe that they may be the second coming of their influences. These thoughts soon fade, however, after the lead single “Wrecking Ball” is finished. It is the only other song that goes above mid-tempo, and afterward the record moves into cruise-control. Plenty of power-pop ditties are to be found on Take Back the Universe..., none of them particularly memorable, save for the album’s standout track, the ultra-poppy guitar-and-keyboard plea for forgiveness “Under the Tracks”.


Originality isn’t exactly Creeper Lagoon’s strong point, as they’re pretty hard to distinguish from the hundreds of other bands doing essentially the same thing- indie-pop with the occasional rocker/acoustic ballad. Songwriting isn’t a strong point either, although it’s by no means bad. The songwriting tandem of Sharky Laguana and Ian Sefchik (who also share singing responsibilities, much like Fugazi) are decent, if unspectacular on Take Back the Universe... (Their first release I Become Small and Go featured “Wonderful Love”, one of the better songs from this recent crop of bands.)Creeper don’t stray too far from the power-pop mold until “Keep From Moving”, a slow distortion-heavy mini-epic in which Ian sings for his the subject to “Keep from moving/You’re paralyzed/From trying to/Recover from that horrible/Breath of chemicals” (see what I said about the lyrics?). The album comes to a conclusion with “Lover’s Leap” a sugary-sweet comedown track, and “Here We Are”, which is essentially the “getting back together” track to follow up “Lover’s Leap”.


Pop songs about love are a dime a dozen, even in these times of inflation, and that’s exactly what Take Back the Universe... is, 13 pretty good pop songs about love. It does very little to separate itself from the pack, but its charm makes it a slightly above-average record. A great bargain bin pickup with a couple good nuggets and nothing more, Creeper Lagoon’s sophomore effort is nothing exceptional, but by no means a bad record.