Why ever graduate 2nd Grade when it's this good?!

Photo by Julia Leiby

I was going to wait until the actual release of the new album Hit To Hit from Philadelphia's 2nd Grade to write about it, but in these times, why wait? Sure, it'll still be 10 days until you can hear the whole thing when it's released on May 29, but at least you can get a few of their songs stuck in your head before then so you can fully appreciate this 24 track monster in its full context in a week and a half. While Hit To Hit is 2nd Grade's debut, bandleader Peter Gill isn't new to the game, having spent time in other bands and releasing music under a number of different names.

2nd Grade lurves the '90s; early indie pop and Teenage Fanclub in particular. And if they don't lurve those things then they've certainly grown an appreciation for them through musical osmosis. The group has the lock on somehow mixing twee rock inclinations with power pop machinations that end up sounding epic and conversational at the same time. I can't tell if Gill and company know just how to push my buttons or if this is just another example of my personal tastes of the past realigning with the music cycle in the present. So if you hear this and immediately think, "This is so familiar, I must have heard this song before!" then the music is successfully doing its job.

You'll still have to wait a bit to hear the whole thing, but getcher feet wet with the handful of tracks below and brace yourself for when this currently-one-of-my-favorite-surpises-of-2020 lands at the end of the month.