Kai Slater knows his classics, and not just the music made a decade before he existed on this Earth. Unlike many of young people around his age, the 21-year-old songwriter — who, in kinship with his ‘mates creating art as the guitarist in the more noisier form with Chicago indie-punks Lifeguard — is enamored with the history of rock ‘n roll well into his grandparents and parents’ eras of the radio dial, spinning on turntables, hissing through cassette, and crystallized on CD, perhaps even better than they do.

With that knowledge, Slater has made it a point to rediscover each decade’s gold standards of power-pop through a brand new set of ears while giving it a lo-fi DIY punk makeover under his solo moniker, Sharp Pins. Like the forefathers McCartney, Lennon, Harrison, and Starr alongside the Herman’s Hermits Peter Noone and later, Big Star’s Alex Chilton, he has a hair-swooped finesse in the art of the melody-making and sugar-coating them sweetly by singing of young romance and the subsequent heartache which surely guarantees an earworm across any timeline. By studying the sonic eccentricities of the rock’s underbelly through song books of the Nerves’ Jack Lee, Guided By Voices’ Bob Pollard, Weezer’s River Cuomo and his homemade work, and more recently, Cindy Lee, Slater leaving loose ends in and not aiming for 100% perfect production quality is his x-factor in making mere pastiche. Instead, it’s a stylistic mod revival for a new generation.

Sharp Pins’ sophomore effort, Balloon Balloon Balloon, quickly follows this recently reissued breakthrough, Radio DDM, and pops even louder. Of all of the names mentioned above, it’s doubled-up tracklisting on this go considers it as 2025’s more digestible answer to Diamond Jubilee. His songwriting formula remains a consistency in substance with its preceding work — colorful power-pop songs with sunny, jangled hooks and melancholic melodies plotted out in all of the right places against grainy, window-smeared exteriors where Slater’s fingerprints run across them to mute, muffle and blow out the speakerbox. He makes it sound like a one-of-a-kind handwritten personal love letter recorded for your ears only.

At its most polished, tracks like the hand-clapped “I Don’t Have The Heart” with its teen idol scream could have easily sent an entire Ed Sullivan studio crowd into a fainting frenzy while “I Could Find Out” and “Queen of Globes and Mirrors” will make you wonder if Slater was actually born under a British fog in a past life. They introduce the album’s foundational points that he can pull off those sounds expertly and seemingly effortlessly, but the deeper you delve into the 21 tracks, it’s there where you start to notice the idiosyncratic oddity within Slater’s craft.

There’s a slightly off-balance rotation to the record, a distant drum crash and boom, his voice faraway, and a distortion guitar solo on “I Don’t Adore-Youo”. The discordance of sunrays beaming in and out of harmony, and their sudden fadeout on “All the Prefabs”. The ear-piercing squelch over the charming balladeering of “Stop to Say ‘Hello’” isn’t enough to make you want to turn down the volume. Power levels coming to a defeated crawl on “Crown of Thorns” are a deserved cool down. Wedged between an abundance of more prim pop-tarts like “Talking In Your Sleep” and “(In A While) You’ll Be Mine”, Sharp Pins throws nostalgia for a loop where every moment has you hanging on to what awaits around the corner, as if it’s the first time you’ve ever heard music made this way.

Highlights: “I Don’t Have The Heart”, “I Don’t Adore- Youo”, “Stop to Say ‘Hello’”

Sharp Pins’ Balloon Balloon Balloon is available now on K Records / Perennial.

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