I was going to write about the new Bonnie Raitt song today, and maybe I will at some future date, but then I heard the new album by Yumi Zouma, Present Tense, and had to write about it instead. Yumi Zouma is a New Zealand band who I had never heard of before this morning despite this being their fourth full-length album. They talked about them on NPR Music’s New Music Friday podcast, which is how I heard about them. They said that this album reminded them of 90’s bands like The Sundays and Mazzy Star or music that would be featured in a coming of age teen movie. All of these things are like catnip to me, so I was already sold. Then they played a snippet of the track I’m highlighting from the album, “Astral Projection” and my immediate association with the reverby guitar that starts the song was The Cure, who are probably my all time favorite band. The album as a whole is little poppier than the broody indie rock of the aforementioned bands, but I can see where they were coming from. As soon as the podcast was over I immediately switched to listening to the whole album, and I love it so much. It’s like it was someone dug into the recesses of my brain and programmed some machine to spit out an album designed exactly for me. I was walking around with a big fool smile on my face listening to it. I immediately came home and ordered it on vinyl. I don’t remember the last time I had this much visceral pleasure listening to a new album.