The Canadian pop-punk outfit Seaway offers a gloriously hooky fourth album with 2020's Big Vibe. The album follows up 2017's Vacation and is the group's first since the departure of singer/guitarist Patrick Carleton. Recorded in Toronto with Anton DeLost, Big Vibe is an exuberant production that finds the band drawing upon an ebullient '70s and early '80s power pop influence. While there's a carefree energy to much of Big Vibe, the album feels like a subtle move away from the nervy punk of the band's early years and further towards a mainstream rock sophistication they've always hinted at. Certainly, the absence of Carleton means the band's dual-lead-singer approach is no longer part of their equation. That said, they more than make up for the change by zeroing in on singer/guitarist Ryan Locke's exuberant songs that mix early '80s rock style with '90s indie rock sensibility. Most emblematic of the tonal shift is the title track, an infectious anthem that perfectly captures the one-amazing-summer/'80s-teen-movie-soundtrack feel of the whole album. Elsewhere, on cuts like "Still Blue" and "Wild Things," the band's crisp, overdriven guitars and brightly attenuated melodies evoke the classic Ray-Bans and Vans energy of band's like the Cars and Cheap Trick. We also get the yearning, Rick Springfield-style romance of "Mrs. David" and the '90s Green Day-meets-Nada Surf of "Pathetic." With Big Vibe, Seaway have made an album that builds upon everything they've done before but pushes them in a bigger, more ambitious direction. ~ Matt Collar, Rovi

1		Brian in a Air
2		Big Vibe
3		Mrs. David
4		Still Blue
5		Wild Things
6		Phathetic
7		Sweet Sugar
8		Peach
9		If You Let Me
10		Wicked
11		Sick Puppy

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