The Pleased

Having undergone an identity crisis of sorts, the Pleased stands ready to make a good second impression. After delivering a pair of EPs under the moniker the Please, this newly reincarnated San Francisco five-piece returns with its debut full-length, a delicate strain of art-pop rife with jangling guitars, glimmering keyboards and despondent vocals. Don’t Make Things channels traditional post-punk divinity, most notably Echo & the Bunnymen, but not without adding gray tones of its own. From the lucid, choral splendor of “Already Gone” to the harrowing bleakness of “About Me,” the Pleased fuses melody and melodrama while keeping things economical throughout. At times, a rather heavy-handed show of influences bleeds through, but despite the occasional misfire (“Oh Canada”), these finger paintings foreshadow promising things.