Sometimes, a record doesn’t need to have high aspirations to be great. It doesn’t need to redefine the boundaries of genre or have some intricate narrative thread. It doesn’t need to offer up some transcendent experience to the listeners.

Sometimes, it just needs to be really, really catchy.

And that’s about the best way I can think to describe this record from Curtail, an Akron quartet made up of emo veterans that delivers effortlessly infectious tunes that isn’t quite emo, but isn’t quite not emo either.

I’ll admit that I maybe wouldn’t have given this record much attention if they weren’t my band’s label mates on Friend Club Records. This isn’t a slight to Curtail at all—it’s just that there’s so much damn music, and my own listening habits generally take me to heavier, more atmospheric regions. I need some gimmicks to capture my attention.

But man, am I glad that it broke through my defenses, because I love this record. I’m not even sure I can articulate it properly. There’s plenty of 90s alt rock influence—both of the Smashing Pumpkins and Beck varieties. There are some alt-country vibes, a la Pinegrove. There’s a breezy indie rock sensibility to it that I want to compare to Interpol, but only in terms of how easy they make it seem. There are faint glimmers of their emo pedigree, but barely as much as Jimmy Eat World’s most mainstream hits. It’s the same sort of difficulty I have pinning down bands like Spoon or Mock Orange—two great bands that often elude easy taxonomy.

At the end of the day, they just write really good songs and play them really well. There are moments of unadulterated pop rock like “Under Daisies” and “I.D.K.” as well as  spacious atmospheres in songs like “Into the Particle” and “Other Plane.” And throughout, they throw so many hooks that it’s impossible to wade through this record and come out unscathed. I might not be able to pin down what makes this record so special, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t just listen to it. In fact, you should probably just listen to it right now and hear for yourself.