Though there's never been a shortage of bedroom-bound singer songwriters making hushed and tender indie pop songs, we seem to be at a particularly fruitful moment for the form. Aspiring schoolteacher Dean Engle, who records as Quarterbacks, has spent the last couple years teasing tiny morsels of K Records-indebted twee out of his four track tape recorder, and now with Quarterboy, which just dropped via Double Double Whammy, he's established himself as one of the foremost in a crowded field.
Most of the record's 12 tracks feature just Engle's sloppily multitracked vocals and a guitar (a drum machine does pop up here and there), but he needs little more than that to spin his simple, nostalgic yarns of lost innocence. The record doesn't even break the 16 minute mark, but Engle squeezes a whole litany of naive anecdotes and addictive melodies into that time span. Like a bite-sized Beat Happening, Engle dwells on the bittersweetness of looking back without ever allowing that sweet side to lapse into despair. Stream the record in full below, or download it for free/however much you want over at Quarterbacks' Bandcamp.
