Okay, so the Nor'easter's out there chewing them up and spitting them out over there and most of the country just snapped itself out of an annoying two weeks of spring freeze, but there is every sign that the vindictive and cruel hands of nature's winter are becoming arthritic. Goodbye mufflers and mittens. Find a closet.

The ushers of this week - California's The Little Ones - couldn't have been any more in-step with the turn of the temps if they were in cahoots with the mercury and the thin glass tubing with the readings snaking up its side like a stocking. They make one think of…entire summary

Okay, so the Nor'easter's out there chewing them up and spitting them out over there and most of the country just snapped itself out of an annoying two weeks of spring freeze, but there is every sign that the vindictive and cruel hands of nature's winter are becoming arthritic. Goodbye mufflers and mittens. Find a closet.

The ushers of this week - California's The Little Ones - couldn't have been any more in-step with the turn of the temps if they were in cahoots with the mercury and the thin glass tubing with the readings snaking up its side like a stocking. They make one think of boardwalks and the dusky sun that wouldn't harm a fly, just cast its ample amber-honey glow around without concession. They are tee-shirt weather (more on that later) and they are here for you to feel better about yourself, once the cabin fever has lost its control and you're free to go. They taunt everything from the waist down -- on everyone within a 10-mile radius -- to not go on and freak out all over the place with euphoric spasms becoming dancing and universally recognized getting down. They taunt and stick their tongues out, knowing the bottom half will snap.

You sweat to everything on the band's lone EP Sing Song. You fall in love to it. You give every song on the too short record a promise ring, with every intention to marry them when you both come to the right age for that business. You give to charities in the album's name. These are the kinds of effortless melodies and heart-warming trinkets that cause jealousy in other songwriters. It's as if youth is created with the same technique as cotton candy is made, right before your ears and eyes. These songs sound like they've lived for thousands of years already, certain and brisk, and they feel like that flimsy old tee-shirt you score at the second hand store and pass around to all of your friends just so they can feel the same kind of worn-in softness that only time can create. It creates jealous envy.

Edward Reyes has the good mind to beat us with sugar and optimism in a day and age when those things are rarer than a T206 Honus Wagner baseball card and a person without a cell phone to their ear. This doesn't make the songs weak-willed or flimsy, however. They are strong and particularly confident. You'll see. They make you want to slip on some cheap ass plastic sunglasses and remember the good old days when Heather Graham used to take her clothes off in motion picture movies co-starring Burt Reynolds. Do you get the picture?

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