Delta Spirit

Out of indie rock's trends, the stylized reemergence of the sounds one's parents and grandparents once owned is the most perplexing — and inevitable. Southern California's Delta Spirit strips that inclination of irony. Between Mott the Hoople, Blood, Sweat and Tears and the Zombies, Matt Vasquez and company have never met a semi-psychedelic, piano-and-fuzz-guitar-based folk-rock album they didn't like — or couldn't revive with blue-eyed soul or bracing, optimistic protest. In other words, they have vision. "Songs we never wrote, seeds they wouldn't sow," Vasquez sings on the rhapsodic manifesto "Strange Vine." "We're planting our own garden." Whether lacerating a distinctively American culture of violence or calling "soul-searching people" to arms, Delta Spirit makes the adjective "anthemic" meaningful and beautiful again.