Tilly and the Wall
Wild Like Children
Team Love

If adolescence had an accompanying soundtrack, it would sound like Wild Like Children, the new full-length by Omaha, Neb., quintet Tilly and the Wall.

Remember high school? Do you really remember it — beyond the bullshit, clichéd misery and alienation? Tilly and the Wall's five friends (all in their mid-20s) do. And in these 10 disarmingly natural, mostly perfect songs, they'll take you along for the ride through that shared Adolescent Anywheresville.

The sweet-and-sour "Nights of the Living Dead" is a trip through time, as Kianna Alarid and Conor Oberst sound-alike Derek Pressnall swap appropriately jarred, jangly vocals:

40 ounces is never enough./ We want to pass out in your yard/ We want to pass out.../ A caravan of kids, some big old mess./ An old wooden dock, oh we're bored to death./ We've got a bottle of wine, a fresh pack of smokes./ We're going to end up screaming about some midnight garage sale.

Ah — it all comes rushing back.

The group has mastered the electric youth thing. Its name is derived from children's book "Tillie and the Wall" by Leo Lionni. The album's cover art is a mature but whimsical drawing of two girls with arms outstretched in a forest, but the inside looks toddler-created, all scribbled hearts and song titles. Intriguingly, the band makes up for its lack of a drummer using the bright staccato heel-clicks of member Jaime Williams' tap-dancing (and it works!).

Tilly's two-boy, three-girl harmonies can be syrupy at times, but don't mistake the Tilly sound for tee-hee twee-pop nonsense. It's deeper than that. Punctuated by shouting here ("I want to fuck it up! I feel so alive!") and sighing there ("I want to go to sleep, and dream of you and me just off the coast") Tilly fuses indie rock's hand-clapping crunch with earnest folk twang and just enough woe-is-me melancholy to keep it all authentic and interesting.

Beyond Tilly's sugarsweet, multi-layered vocals (most are shared by Alarid, Neely Jenkins and Jaime Williams), the band uses guitar, keyboard and hand percussion to fill out its exuberant sound. Most of Wild Like Children sounds grandiose, but feels organic — like singing drunk around a campfire with your best friends, or screaming at the wind as you careen down a hot summer street on your bike. Best of all, Tilly's songs capture a sort of shared, sweeping youth, evoking bittersweet memories of younger days.

The group pushes past the lonely, gray haze shrouding teendom — the typical outsider crap — instead leading you to the good stuff, those hidden parts of high school you've dulled or forgotten: losing a first love, the first smoke, drink and sexual fumbling that made you feel all worldly and adult. Everything was charged and intoxicating, and life often felt, as Alarid sings in "You and I Misbehaving," like "floating weightless through the tops of trees."

That song neatly condenses the theme and feel of the album — a darkly exhilarating paean to resistance against a stodgy adult world that wants its kids automated and empty-headed. Pressnall pleads to "Darcy," his apparent partner in crime, "They're pushing buttons. They're pointing fingers, trying to keep you quiet. But you and I misbehaving are trying our best to feel alive. And we won't ever let them win."

Later in the song, Pressnall and Alarid trade call-and-response verses about the miseries of the monotonous way of life embraced by the world beyond their bubble — an impassive existence constantly threatening to pull its bravest souls under. Pressnall coos, "All these people talk a lot. They know this, they know it all. But... this place could be so beautiful. You just can't let them pull the cloth over your eyes." And the band escalates into a suddenly rollicking chant: "Ba ba ba, ba ba ba..."

At a recent Tilly and the Wall show at NYC's Mercury Lounge, I was both amazed and alarmed — and not just because all three of the band's gorgeous-voiced girls looked equally flawless, like corn-fed, polka-dot-clad glossy magazine models. The group captivated for better reasons: its innocent, guileless energy and its chemistry.

Live and on Wild Like Children, the five members of Tilly and the Wall have created something big. Not only because their music is beautiful, fun and inspiring, or because they unabashedly celebrate the know-it-all glory and recklessness of youth. It's their passion, which is audible. It's their ability to draw listeners into a private gala, where we're all awake and eager and a part of something that's absolutely addictive.

— Laura Barcella (laura_barcella@yahoo.com)