Decided to write this entire essay with sunglasses on.Figured that there needn't have to be a rational reason for doing so, for this is Imperial Teen and the band has always been the equivalent of white pants, white dresses, white shirts, white shoes and shades for me. It's always been that feeling of clean and crisp sensations, a brightness contrasted against the underpinnings of darker themes. They've always been a bit about bringing some of the bummer to the beach. You're there to have fun, as all of the poppy hooks are evidence of, but the waves wind up crashing against somber ideas of personal wreckage, or the convoluted task of dealing with people and emotions when there's little chance of getting out of any of it alive. We hear Roddy Bottum, Will Schwartz, Lynn Truell and Jone Stebbins sing things like, "He's in over his head," and, "I don't know how you do it," amongst other sorts of exasperated comments of true amazement and we're pulled into a world where, as Schwartz sings that these are, "the best of times, the worst of days." We stare there at the reflection that pops back at us from the surface of the pool that we feel we're looking into and we can't grasp what's there. It's a person floating, seemingly stuck on the edge, just as we are and we don't recognize it. We look through the image or we try to reach out and shake its hand, only to never get closer, without falling right into the illusion, or the water, whichever comes first. Then we snap the fuck out of it and just wonder where the cold beer is because it's too warm and too dreamy out here in this setting to be worried about dumb things like "where do we go from here," "what did that mean" or "why wasn't I nicer when I talked to my dad on the phone the other night." Still, we can't help but worry about there, why and how the hell you're gonna make up for what you did.