This was one of my favorite releases from late 2013. Deserve, from the Vancouver four-piece Weed, is sludge pop perfection, with all the melody of shoegaze but with heavier stuff going on under the surface. The gauzy melodies and dreamy chords of your classic dream-pop/noise-pop alternate with squalls of noise and more abrasive, heavier, darker parts that seem like they could come from the songbooks of Nirvana or Unwound (and not surprisingly, the singer has a Husker Du tattoo.) The whole thing comes off sounding like a more punk, lower fidelity Hum or a slightly poppier version of early Dino Jr., and a comparison to either of these two can never be a bad thing. At 27 minutes, this is a quick album, especially for one of its genre, but having an album this concise works well for Weed. While there’s no track as remarkably good as the opener “Heal,” the next eight are all still super memorable and uniformly strong. “Heal” though, is the obvious hit. Opening with bursts of feedback, pounding drums, and droning guitars, Weed slides into the earworm of a guitar hook that the song is built around. Alternating more melodic verses with shouted, heavy choruses, the song writhes in a storming cloud of feedback. My other favorites on the album were the second track, “Set Me Back,” and the closer, “Granted.” Great album and totally worth checking out. Pick it up from Couple Skate Records.