Sometimes the most startling new music is the stuff that sounds somehow familiar. With FLICKERING FLASHLIGHT, Montreal's ADAM & THE AMETHYSTS have lit up a box of homemade fireworks, firing psychedelic folk and pinwheeling pop, crowing for the love of all the old songs and all the young ones, too: the Beach Boys and Kurt Vile, Os Mutantes and Woods, George Harrison and Chad VanGaalen.

FLICKERING FLASHLIGHT is also the highest-fi lo-fi record you'll hear this year. Much as it evokes Van Dyke Parks' ensembles and Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, this bold blushing sound was recorded in a single tiny room at the front of Adam's apartment; an office stuffed with guitars, amps, patch cords, a giant vintage map of Lake Superior. FLICKERING FLASHLIGHT is available from KELP RECORDS on 180g vinyl / CD and digital.