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The eleven power pop pleasures offered up by Canada’s Two Hours Traffic on their sophomore platter Little Jabs may only be an inch deep, but they’re miles wide. One of the breeziest and most instantly engaging listens I’ve had in quite some time, the group’s sun splashed tunes arrived just in time to supply me with the necessary musical battle armor to endue another brutal winter. There may be no better way to buoy one’s spirits while enduring sub degree Minnesotan weather on a corner bus stop than by bopping to the raucously buoyant rhythms of gleefully bacchanalian anthem “Stuck for the Summer,” a jam whose live for the moment lyrical manifesto is basically a direct indictment against winter malaise (“Nobody wants to get stuck for the summer/Started with one then we ended with another/Scratch your name in my side/It’s all about making good time”).

As one might guess on an album that bears song titles like “Backseat Sweetheart” that aren’t intended ironically, Little Jabs is an album long on shameless fun while perhaps slightly short in lyrical substance (“Girl you’re out of sight/As anyone can see”). What the early twentysomethings lack in lyrical poetics they more than make up for with their skills in the art of the well placed hand clap, tambourine shake or backing ohh and ahh – not to mention the gargantuan hooks that anchor nearly every track. Whether opting for crunchy electric new wave ala forebears like the Cars and Fountains of Wayne or a slightly more pastoral approach on a handful of acoustic strummers, Two Hours Traffic appear to be pulling from a seemingly endless well of crisp, catchy melodies. If anything the group’s consistency is perhaps ultimately its Achilles heel, with so many airy winning songs flitting by with such frequency the pop jubilation tends to blur into a bit of an indistinguishable jumble by the end – all of it enjoyable in the moment of listening, but not necessarily memorable after the fact. On the strongest third of the album, however, Two Hours Traffic has come up with the perfect soundtrack for any pop lover’s endless summer.

Watch the music video for "Stuck for the Summer"