With winter kicking in, I couldn’t have asked for a better album to fall into my lap than The Morning Bender’s sophomore effort Big Echo. The California four-piece have well and truly delivered on the promise of their 2008 debut Talking Through Tin Cans with a meticulously produced set of hook-laden pop.

From start to finish, Big Echo is drenched in the sights and particularly the sounds of summer. The melodies are bright and lively, the guitar lines positively shimmer. This album is not so much about summer. It is summer. And with the with spring still a few months off I suggest you put this record on, close your eyes and dive in.

Album opener Excuses has been generating plenty of buzz online over the past few months, and it is easy to see why. It begins with the crackle of a needle hitting vinyl, the sound of trembling piano and slide guitar which explode into a swooning string section and the warm strums of front man Christopher Chu’s acoustic guitar. By the time he starts singing, you’re already hooked.

Chu said in a live recording of that Excuses was about first love, and in five glistening minutes he manages to capture a complex array of emotions with a confidence that belies his young age. Excuses is what pop should be; bright, heartfelt and catchy as hell.

While the rest of the album never quite reaches the peak of Excuses there are plenty of great moments on Big Echo. The shuffling snares and woozy textures of Pleasure Sighs or the yelping guitars and yearning vocals in Hand Me Downs would be the centrepieces of lesser albums. On Big Echo they merely reinforce just how talented the morning benders are.

The album is produced by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor and Big Echo borrows heavily from its indie forbears. The guitar line at the beginning of Promises sounds ripped right from the heart of Veckatimest, as does the rhythmic and textual changes throughout Pleasure Sighs.

But for an album which so readily displays its influences, the Grizzly Bear thing is merely one small part of the sonic pastiche that is Big Echo. Chu is somewhat of a musical magpie, taking elements from a variety of styles and periods of music and to create something that is undoubtedly his own.

The soaring choral harmonies are reminiscent of Pet Sounds era Beach Boys, as is the attention to production. The string sample in Excuses is from an Etta James track. Even Chu’s voice evokes similarities to James Mercer (lead singer of The Shins) both in pitch and meter. These influences share very few similarities save for the fact that they are all examples of warm, technically brilliant music.

It’s easy to forget that Chu is still in his early twenties, and Big Echo is the sound of a very talented songwriter finding the sounds to fit his musical vision. The liner notes to the album quote a Zen proverb which says “shouting into a valley/big shout: big echo”; The Morning Benders have been making an echo of their own, and hopefully it is one that we will be hearing for years to come.