Love letters to California

Grandaddy’s Jason Lytle grew up in Modesto, but now lives in Montana. Still, his roots in the Golden State run deep and true as evidenced on I Heart California. The album is the debut offering of Admiral Radley, which features Lytle and Grandaddy bandmate Aaron Burtch collaborating with Aaron Espinoza and Ariana Murray from the Los Angeles-based band Earlimart. The resulting 11-track album plays like an aurally breezy but emotionally complicated love letter to California. The title track, with its nod to “fake tits” and citrus, Interstate 5 and truck stops, is at once sweet yet cynical. Burtch and Murray, who sing on tracks such as “Ending of Me” and “The Tread,” provide a delicate anecdote to Lytle’s emotion-weary croak and throughout, the album is rife with satisfying bits of fuzzed-out distortion, sweet melodies and nostalgic takes on old parties, older friends and “all those things I used to know.” I Heart California is the perfect hot-weather road-trip record. Come winter songs such as “I’m Fucked Up on Beer” and “Ghost of Syllables” may seem slight, disposable even. But that’s the beauty of summer—it lasts only as long as it needs to.