Wild Light: Adult Nights

The band is called Wild Light, and the first song off its debut album, Adult Nights, features the chorus “Fuck today / fuck San Francisco / fuck California.” But beyond that, there’s nothing especially rowdy or rebellious about this New Hampshire alt-rock quartet. Adult Nights is full of hooky, guitar-driven pop songs that land halfway between the roiling mythmaking of The Arcade Fire and The Decemberists, and the minimalist art-pop of Vampire Weekend and The Rosebuds. Wild Light favors soaring harmonies and songs about beaches and canyons. Adult Nights is sweet and upbeat—so relentlessly so that at times it comes off as a little facile. But it’s hard to discount the can’t-dislodge-it-from-the-head catchiness of songs like “Call Home,” or the cut-to-the-quick self-definition of “New Hampshire,” which cheerily ties generations of regional entrenchment to an accident of fate.