Pittsburgh psych-poppers The Van Allen Belt really enjoy keeping the start value for difficulty high; between the mesmerizing, serpentine melodies of lead singer Tamar Kamin’s otherworldly croon and the group’s everything-but-the-kitchen-sink performance style, “Lovely in Akron,” off the group’s 2010 full-length release Superpowerfragilis, is anything but simple. The track easily encapsulates influences from forty years of pop music, evoking anything from the Euro indie-pop bombast of Jens Lekman to the symphonic swells of The Ronnettes, and doing it multiple times in less than three minutes. The linchpin of the entire operation remains Kamin’s voice, a sultry expansion of Zooey Dechanel’s detached song: insouciant but playful, opulent yet controlled.
speed of the pittsburgh sound 