Before we leave the summer of discovery, we need to examine a germ unearthed in Missoula, Montana: Mordecai. Not to concentrate on locale, Mordecai does sound immediately untouched, as if the ephemera of popular culture disintegrates before landing in Big Sky country. But we now live in a world where evolved technology has made such places less distant. We’re all connected and everything’s there for the taking. In the best possible way, though, Mordecai are frozen in a vast, glorious rut where the typical classic rock station buzzes all day, mail order has never been replaced by the daily download, and ideas of freedom take on grand implications (there’s no one else there to tell you that you suck). We can imagine that over the years (if Mordecai is old or young is anyone’s guess), a few parcels postmarked early ’80s fall from an errant cargo plane, never making it from New Zealand or Manchester to their rightful destinations. These guys intercept said records and open them piecemeal like an advent calendar. Just last week they made it through This Nation’s Saving Grace.

Of course, asking how College Rock (Richie Records) came to be raises questions. Was it conceived in one night of basement drinking? Is it years of recordings finally cobbled together in a shambolic perfection? Even though there’s still the ubiquity of Z100 cultivating many a childhood in Missoula (check out the arena dirtweed stench of “Put” first thing), Mordecai are well versed in, well, college rock, as well as the kind of weirdo punk circulated by the Desperate Bicycles, Flipper, and GG. Most notable are the pop-centered moments of the record. Songs like “Tongue” and “Space Between” are tethered to a genuine slacker nonchalance, bouncing in the jangle of The Clean or crowding up the periphery with obtuse solos much in the vein of Westing-era Pavement (which itself was a softening of The Fall’s prickly thorns). Still, by the mantra, freedom in every note, College Rock does counter with sinister dirges, as on “Heat,” and quick crass barbs like the almost-anthem of “New Eyes.” Be it art school or no school, any semblance of education leading to this record is erased in the grooves. College Rock was first and foremost borne from the moment, not the past, nor the future.