Coke and Spiriters

Coke-and-Spiriters, the second album from New York's Dream Bitches, is a combustive culmination of the band's first five years making music together. Packed with snarling pop anthems and hyper-literate acoustic ballads, this concise collection captures the Bitches at their most vibrant and volatile.

The now five-piece is sporting songs with bigger hooks and biting, schizophrenic subject matter. Where Sanfransisters celebrated friendship, the relationships chronicled on Coke-and-Spiriters are beyond dysfunctional; lyricist Kikuchi's narrators come out swinging on songs like "bad Luck Bill" and "Maniacal Mechanic," and even sweet couplets like "You're as perfect as I want it/You're as pretty as they come" are spat out like death threats.

Despite the misanthropic lyrics, the music is far from introverted. Dream Bitches' sound has expanded tremendously since their last record - it's bigger, brighter and bolder than before, a kind of brainy power pop that evokes forebears like the Breeders and contemporaries like Tegan and Sara. Kikuchi and Zakaluk's vocal melodies stagger and intertwine, and their intricate harmonies make very chorus soar.