I've now listened to this a couple times, and I'm honestly not sure what I make of it. I think I like it, but it feels more like a guilty pleasure than any other album by an "indie" act in recent memory. The closest comparison in that regard is Liz Phair's self-titled album. The difference is that Phair's attempt seemed like a sincerely legitimate attempt to get her songs played on pop radio. Under the Blacklight comes off as a playful review of the last few decades of radio hits that just happens to include period-appropriate production. I give them props for that, since it's a neat experiment that sometimes pays off big.
"Breakin' Up" comes off like ABBA in a great way, "Dejalo" has a K-Tel hits of the 70s thing, and "Dreamworld" is a ringer for a solid Buckingham-led post-Tusk Fleetwood Mac tune (far moreso than "Silver Lining," which sounds to me more like the old Rilo Kiley than most of the tracks here). The best tracks (the aforementioned and "Close Call") work like candy, and there are some slight, but fun, experiments like "15" and "Smoke Detector," but they overdo it on "Moneymaker," which wastes a nice Modest Mouse-esque intro guitar line on a cobbled-together verse-chorus combination that I'm pretty sure is supposed to be their version of a 70s guitar rock song a la Foreigner or Loverboy. Their all-inclusiveness also backfires on "Give a Little Love," which isn't that strong to begin with, but isn't improved by the gimmick of using the canned rhythm track (again, presumably to root it in a specific era of pop music, in this case, the 90s - the present).
Even despite its weaknesses, it may be the best "fun" album I've heard all year. It's, by far, the shallowest work of a band that wasn't all that deep to begin with, and I don't mean that as a slam. I don't think.
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