The opening to Pomegranates second album beseeches you (well, everybody) to ‘come outside’; it’s a whimsical gang-vocal led reverb drenched introduction to an album that makes you want to stop whatever inevitably mundane, serious thing it is you’re doing and follow the indie-pop pied pipers on their conceptual flight of fancy.It’s the little touches that do it. The almost bossa nova opening of ‘Svaatzi Uutsi’, that transports you instantly to a Hawaiian beach to better enjoy the subsequent shoegaze. The strikingly passionate vocals screaming out “I’m so tired of living in the city and never being able to see the stars at night/and yes I know we are so far apart we’re still looking together at the same night sky” at the close of ‘This Land Used To Be My Land But Now I Hate This Land’. The lofty atmospherics and sudden steel string bridge of ‘Coriander’. The baseline is an album that is consistently inviting and evocative with brief but frequent moments of inspiration.The concept of the album is that of a young boy leaving home to embark on his travels before crossing paths with a group of time travellers and their spaceship ‘Coriander’! Pomegranates manage to pull it all off with a sense of innocence on the verge of maturity. It’s a sense evoked in large part by the unique timbre of Joey Cook and Issac Karns juxtaposed vocals; one tender, high, almost elegiac, the other sombre and deep.Pomegranates evoke their wanderlust and fixation with a sense of belonging through dreamy pop, and for the most part they succeed brilliantly in implicating you in their quest.There are however moments when Pomegranates lose their way. For all the brilliant moments of lilting pop things occasionally border on the saccharine and plodding as in ‘384 BC’. Unfortunately the fact that everything is constantly awash in a sea of reverb robs some of the riffs and musical ideas of their clarity, exacerbated by the fact the final third of the album seems underdeveloped in comparison.Even so these Cincinatti boys then have produced an album of uplifting, bright melodies, sullied only rarely by a reliance on downtempo simplicity. Everybody, Come Outside is a ray of sun piercing the winter clouds rolling in, certain tracks definitely deserved of being called beautiful. It may, however, be hard to hear past the overarching sound if you’re not too keen on your indie pop tinged with twee. Either way, Pomegranates are much more super fruit than bland smoothie.mp3:> Pomegranates: 'Everybody, Come Outside!'

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