The Love Language, Tonight at The End

Merge artists and North Carolina natives The Love Language first caught my ear with their eponymous 2009 release. When they came through back in September,

. Now they're back, still touring in support of Libraries — a record that features the stellar jam "Brittany's Back," which you can see them performing live on KEXP above — and

for you:

The Love Language caught a bad break when they made their Nashville debut back in September. Headlining the painfully-cavernous-when-empty Exit/In on a Sunday night (yikes!), the North Carolinian indie-pop outfit — in this case, “indie-pop” as in the pop-gold hooks and harmonies of Roy Orbison and Brian Wilson, filtered through The Walkmen’s backline and Bob Pollard’s four-track — had the serendipitous misfortune of competing with cutesy blog-darlings Best Coast, who were capitalizing on their mounting hype across town at Mercy Lounge. Undeterred, The Love Language still put on an unfettered, sweat-and-passion-drenched performance for the 25 or 30 people who were there, as opposed to a detached, glorified rehearsal bewailing those who weren’t. Under the stewardship of crack songwriter Stewart McClamb, the band has put out two of the sharpest, most consistent, tuneful, and great records of the last three years — 2009’s The Love Language and last year’s Libraries. The former is a casual, lovelorn, emotional purging, nimbly recorded in his bedroom, while the latter — its follow-up and Merge Records debut — boasts a full-bodied studio sheen to coat the pure pop symphonies the auteur and his soldiers have no problem replicating, even augmenting, live.