Some bands have all the luck. While many of their peers will probably be toiling on the live circuit for years before gaining any recognition beyond their immediate circle of friends, the college kids of Luby Sparks are already going places.
Thanks to a combination of good luck and some undeniably cracking songs, the quintet is releasing its polished debut album this week — recorded in London with one of the band's musical idols — before any of the members have even graduated university.
The self-titled "Luby Sparks" pairs wistful girl-boy vocals with a punchy guitar attack that recalls the early-1990s U.K. shoegaze scene and the noisier elements of the Britpop era that followed. In this respect, the band has something in common with '90s-influenced acts such as U.S. indie-rockers The Pains of Being Pure at Heart and U.K. group Yuck (whose frontman, Max Bloom, co-produced the album).