This St. Paul band's debut features enough jangly twang on "Ohio, Circa 1984" to suggest they're alternative country.
But delicate guitar pop is the centerpiece of this album. It's lo-fi and impressionistic in a way that's become common to indie rock. Joey Ryan & the Inks sound as if the Old 97's and the Shins wrote songs together.
References to the Beach Boys are also in order, and not just because of the band's expansive use of the kind of swooning vocal harmonies you'll hear on "Oh, Caroline." Their brooding nostalgia, like Brian Wilson's, belies their youthful age. On "Anything We Want," the horns rise and fall like heavy sighs.
The album sounds like Surfer Girl having ventured to a place where the buffalo roam. Well, Here We Are Then is a lonely sonic landscape, and it's worthy of your lust.