Sharp Pins Balloon Balloon Balloon

Sharp Pins' New 2025 Album Balloon Balloon Balloon on LP.

Submission. That’s the word that comes to mind when tasked with spending time on the overwhelming pop planet that belongs to Kai Slater’s Sharp Pins. The universe only works when you submit: submit to love, submit to rock music. Submission to the power that comes from a kid wielding his guitar to craft impeccable guitar pop that stands in a pantheon of idols he joins with this record.

Sharp Pins is the super solid lo-fi noise pop project of talented Chicago musician Kai Slater of Lifeguard and Dwaal Troupe.

Of course it makes sense to be mad at first. Everyone was mad at Big Star for getting too close to the Beatles. And everyone will be mad at Sharp Pins for doing the same and then adding Guided by Voices into the mix. How dare he? The hubris. What 20 year old thinks they can out Robert Pollard the man himself? “Queen of Globes and Mirrors?” Criminal. With a worse crime of crafting songs so puzzlingly timeless, a listener may well believe they were poached from a lost Beatles tape. “I Don’t Have the Heart” and “(I Want to) Be Your Girl” genuinely confuse from when or where they were made.

But if Balloon x 3 reminds us of anything, it's that only Kai can do this. With his 12-string and infatigable obsession with pop music, Slater is uniquely equipped to carry the mantle of not only Pollard and Chilton, but the Byrds too, or the Temptations, the Four Tops, and every other artist trying to nail true love to tape. He employs the “asking for forgiveness not permission” tactic when tasked with borrowing from these greats, our only option is to forgive Slater for giving us these gems of rock n roll - propelling it from the past into a future so melodiously flawless, yet jagged and sincere, we can’t help but thank him too for rescuing the genre from irrelevance.

Because what Slater adds is entirely his own. An ineffable songwriting sensibility, that despite the heavy borrowing, can only be his. By the end of the album, you swallow whatever anger or incredulity you may have had and accept that yes, the Sharp Pins really are that good. Throughout the spanning but never indulgent LP, crafts a world peppered with small pop gems, so simply and stupidly good, they remind us another world is possible. Because it’s not just that the songs are impossible to get out of your head, which they are. It’s that Slater’s own devotion to this pursuit of the perfect pop song makes us believe it is not only possible, but enough to give life shape and color again. Fall in Love Again is not a suggestion, it’s a requirement. Not just with a beautiful girl, of whom there are many on the album, but with the world itself. Perhaps only then will it be possible to push toward the future that 20 year old Slater himself dreams of, but in the meantime, we have his love letters to rock n’ roll and the world around it to keep us company.