Imperial Teen: All Over You (indie exclusive-purple vinyl) LP

Beneath the sleek, confident guitar line that powers "Overdrive", the lead single of Imperial Teen's new album "All Over You", another guitar marks the time more impatiently, as if the groove its locked into is the time bomb-tightness of a pre-hookup heartbeat. Its energy isn't nervous - but it is urgent. Excited. Titillated. That's the word that best describes the prospect of a new Imperial Teen record: titillating. They come out every five or six years, each new album acting as, to quote Roddy Bottum (guitars, keyboards, vocals), "an episodic piece of where we are now, where the world is now, who we have become, and the geography of our collective consciousness. There is considerable distance between Imperial Teen, its members having made lives for themselves in different cities, but the collective consciousness that exists between them makes distance and time seem immaterial to the listener. "All Over You" crushes, brought to life by four musicians who found each other in the clubs of San Francisco over three decades ago and have remained family ever since. It is less a return from hiatus than a broadcast from the sonic utopia Imperial Teen has long ruled over, where the music is bratty and sexy and the parties don't stop until everyone’s found euphoria.