Tough Lovers exercise guitar-propelled alt-pop on Good Morning

The world is by and large a miserable and shitty place, and sometimes the last thing you need is a band of nihilistic misanthropes reminding you of that. That’s where the likes of Weezer and Nada Surf come in handy. Or, closer to home, Tough Lovers.

The five-song Good Morning EP is a professional-sounding exercise in classic guitar-propelled alt-pop. The emphasis there is on “professional”: singer Jamie Smail, guitarist Graham Madden, bassist Dane Stevens, and drummer Ryan Stephenson have mastered their craft to the point where, if this were 1994 instead of 2012, they’d have their pick of major-label contracts to choose from.

An iron-clad grasp of the importance of harmonies and hooks aside, it’s the little things that stand out here. Like the way that the bright, bouncy, and charmingly winsome “Started With a Spark” is interrupted mid-song by a feedback-laden, distortion-soaked solo. Or how the cascading “Inside My Head” gets doused in a mix of country-noir guitar and desert-mirage organ. Hell, Tough Lovers even manage to make a track with the title “Graveyards” sound more or less upbeat. As opposed to, you know, a headache-inducing blast of sonic wretchedness by some band with a moniker like Doomed and Disgusting.