Sometimes the music of the moment seeps into the collective consciousness and influences everything. Take grunge, for instance: Creed felt Pearl Jam in its zeitgeist and held on tight. Or Brit-pop: Coldplay strained out the good from Radiohead. Now it seems like bands are swallowing the dubstep pill, but just absorbing the poisonous wub-wub bass drop drum break that made the genre so popular with tweakers. Now, every time a song has a drum break it will verge on the precipice of dubstep, no matter the original genre.

Chris Garneau must back away from the edge. The synths and caveman drums on “Oh God” nod to MGMT, while the ahh- and ooh-filled vocals have been utilized by Arcade Fire imitators before. The melody is more grown-up and practiced, leading through a marching snare break with some Stankonia-era pitch-shifted worm vocals and a silver trumpet before heading back into the wordless vocal melody. Chan Marshall and Jim O’Rourke would be proud that their influences made it out into the world, as will all the folkies out there over-pronouncing their Rs.

Winter Games is cute and innocuous, like dressing for an inch-deep snowfall in handmade boots and thick socks. At the same time, the reverb permeating every song gives it a depth that will lose impact when translated into real life. God bless these technological advancements that make sounds appear bigger than they are, that make affected vocals sound genuine, that make a 1 + 0 binary beat sound bigger than Bohnam’s kick drum in a church hall. Without them, where would we be as listeners? How would we be able to navigate the modern music landscape without a grasp of what a standard iOS program can do to acoustic music? But Pearl Jam’s reverb was just right, and Radiohead’s dryness never failed them. In the wrong hands, they are just effects and not enhancements, adding nothing to the music, but a facade over a flimsy frame. On iPod headphones Winter Games is okay, but put it through the ringer of real speakers and all the shiny shortcuts and flaws begin to show.