Immediately and consistently both pleasantly refreshing and refreshingly pleasant, Prints’ self titled album is a highly impressive debut from duo Kenseth Thibideau, a member of the Sacramento greats Pinback, Sleeping People and Tarantel, and Zac Nelson, a fellow Sacramento native.

To answer your two first questions: 1. Yes, they are referencing Prince with their band name Prints, but in doing so they simply give lighthearted homage to Prince’s high voice and include similar vocals throughout the album. 2. No, they sound almost nothing like the current Sacramento progressive/hardcore/punk scene. This is certainly psychedelic electronic pop.

Prints itself is a great paradox: it’s entirely cohesive yet each song is almost completely different and great in its own way. For that reason I’m forced to do a track by track analysis, or else there’s no giving you an idea of what the music’s like.

The chorus of “Easy Magic,” the opening song, magically repeats “Is it magic? if it’s easy, if it’s easy” over ecstatic da-da-doo’s (which, I might add, are pervasive in every song). My repetition of magic is intended because I’m stressing just how magical it is. It’s so magical, in fact, that it would definitely be on the soundtrack for happy magicians. If Gandalf had an iPod, you know he’d be playing “Easy Magic” on repeat. This song is basically way cool Sesame Street music.

The instrumentation of the next song, “Too Much Water,” happily spins your head in circles and includes interesting lyrics like, “realistic run and jump and float to sea.”

Now imagine Prince singing “There’s a pretty tick / Suckin’ your blood and shit” along to a dancey Notwist/Ween instrumental collaboration. That, my friends, is as good a description as you’re going to get of “Pretty Tick.”

“Pretty Tick” immediately transitions into the aptly named “Meditation,” which is filled with standard light monkish chants over a light guitar riff and random coughs and weird voice overs. It’s obvious Prints want us to meditate on all the ticks that have “sucked your blood and shit” in the past.

And then, just when you were getting used to all that contemplating about your tick bites, out comes a sunny and soulful Queen’s-”You’re-My-Best-Friend” styled song called “Blue Jay.” Bouncing around this track are wonderful lyrics like “We shut our mouths without a sound / Our energy is in the ground / One thing wrong with this you see / Is that you’re not in love with me.”

Next is the most Rob Crow (Pinback & Heavy Vegetable leader)-ish song. It’s the least happy pop song yet and it starts off with a classic Pinback-styled heavy bass, gradually adding more interesting elements as it builds. Psychedelic backup vocals start reverberating, Zero 7 styled guitar riffs and keyboards add in, whistles start blowing, the main vocals come in dreamily singing “I wanna know / When mama looks to me / I know it’s not me / Simplicity feels me,” weird gibberish-filled vocals go kooky, and then the song winds down magnificently.

Continuing the trend into slower and more thoughtful music, “All we Knead” gives modern shoegazer bands like the Editors a run for their money.

The last track, “End,” is a modern Prince’s “Purple Rain,” and it winds Prints down without being so dramatic and without any vocals – just “Dee-da-doo’s.” The last couple minutes of the song go techno, but in a very tasteful way.

Prints is successfully smooth without ever sounding overly produced. It never sounds corny or childish even though the whole album has “doo-dee-doo-das.” It’s a great homage and a particularly impressive exploratory effort that I can’t stop listening to cause it’s so damn gratifying!

Might Remind You Of: Queen, Prince, Beach Boys, Pinback, Brendan Benson, Stereolab, Talking Heads, Brian Eno, Ween, Notwist

LISTEN: A coupla MySpace songs

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>