Chester French

Even without the backing of trendsetting music celebs like Kanye and Pharrell Williams, Chester French members and Harvard alumni D.A. Wallach and Maxwell Drummery were clearly destined for big things. Their debut long-player, Love The Future, is a multi-stylistic patchwork of sounds and rhythms in which an accessible, old-meets-new pop rock base serves as a launching pad for a slew of sonic themes that are anything but. Dramatic string elements feature heavily in their wide-ranging creations, adding oodles of emotive weight alongside the character-rich organ turns of the sweeping floor-stomper "Bebe Buell" and the equally rambunctious "The Jimmy Choos." Poppy '60s soul earns a nod on the brief "Time To Unwind" before things erupt into the quirky show tune theatrics of "Fingers" then fall off into the quizzically minimalist, Barrett-era, Floyd-ian musings of "Country Interlude." Through it all, Chester French strike a fine balance between plainly digestible musicality and a level of expansive experimentation that continues to reward with each successive spin.