Moving from Boston to Los Angeles via Portland, Oregon, The Dead Trees confess that they are “wandering nomads”. They’ve recorded on both coasts, toured three continents and supported Albert Hammond Jr. and MGMT. Restlessness, it seems, is in their DNA.

It’s also a big part of their music. Whatwave, their second full studio release, moves as quickly as a featherweight boxer, but hits a little harder, with punchy tracks which seldom clock in longer than three minutes. Its twelve songs in total run to less than half an hour, but there’s a lot to enjoy in its brisk running time.

Led by the communicative, almost conversational vocals of Michael Ian Cummings, The Dead Trees’ music is an unlikely marriage between two of New York’s most recognisable bands: The Strokes and The Velvet Underground. Cummings’ vocals are centrepiece of this union, landing somewhere between Lou Reed’s almost-too-laid-back vocal style and Julian Casablancas’ melodic drawl. Matthew Borg’s arthouse guitar lines owe a debt to both groups, too, mixing the clean, early-50s sound which Hammond Jr. employs so successfully with a sparse, echoey playing style that Sterling Morrison would be proud to call his own.

Indeed, Whatwave does feel like a product of its influences, perhaps moreso than any other record released this year. Although the aforementioned acts are the foundation of the DT’s sound, elements of 1990s alternative music seep into the sides, most notably Wilco and Pavement.

That said, to be able to name four such superb acts is a huge advantage, one which should ensure much word-of-mouth popularity. Whatwave, entirely self-financed through fan donations to a Kickstarter account, is a very likeable record, its creators just as affable.

However, all the good buzz and goodwill in the world wouldn’t be able to cover for a poor product – happily for all concerned, The Dead Trees’ sophomore effort is far from one. Its opening two tracks – ‘Slow Faze’ and ‘Slow Faze Fast’ – showcase the group’s ability to switch from slow sprawl to New York swagger almost instantly; although both combined are less than three minutes long, they’re engaging and offer an insight into the dual sounds which dominate Whatwave.

‘Comfortable Kids’ – certainly the most Tweedy-reminiscent track on the album – is a slow burner, a nicely weighted intimate track which takes full advantage of Cummings’ unique vocal style, while ‘My Time Has Just Begun’ bounces off a funky backbeat. The latter is Strokes-lite, but it’s catchy as chicken pox and, when paired with the effusive ‘Play Your Hand’, shows that The Dead Trees can craft a toe-tapping guitar-pop melody when they feel so inclined.

Whatwave as a record can be separated into a series of pairs, in all honesty: ‘Comfortable Kids’ and ‘Rayna’ channelling the Velvets, ‘Older’ and ‘Arrows’ calling early ‘90s shoegaze to mind, and so on. Whilst each of these styles is played with verve and sounds accomplished, the constant changeovers cause a slight disjointedness which means the record doesn’t quite flow as smoothly as you’d like.

The second issue is, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of running time. On one level it’s refreshing to hear a record so free from chaff, cut down to just its core principles, without baggy tracks which drag the whole album down. Another advantage is that it leaves the listener wanting more. Yet this second advantage is also something of a curse: we want quite a bit more than what we get.

It’s a fine balance, to be sure, but where making an album too long can make it tiresome, making it too short can make it irritating. Whatwave falls just the wrong side of this latter line, leaving us to question what might’ve been had it explored its ideas a little more, rather than extolling its virtues for being a short-but-sweet masterpiece.

In the end, Whatwave is a mixed bag of ideas, all performed admirably and which are fun to listen to, but whose end result feels a too lightweight to be considered essential.