Crystal Anis is The Limiñanas’ eighth release since their start in 2009 (if you count MOJO Magazine’s Pet Sounds Revisited disc, which they appear on) and every new concoction seems to use the same ingredients as the last. I wouldn’t say they are just going back to the well; they seem to have arrived at the sound they were after. You can definitely hear it rising to the top in their pre-Limiñanas efforts as Les Bellas, as well as their 2010 self-titled LP. That said, The Limiñanas are unique among modern garage rock outfits.

It seems as though The Limiñanas sound has been painstakingly extracted from whichever French psych-sploitation scopitone would have fallen next in the queue after Georges de Giafferi’s Sado Maso. Coinciding with their previous work, Crystal Anis gives the occasional nod to Hazelwood’s cowboy psychedelia and more than a few winks at yé-yé camp and soundtracks de films érotiques. Although their arrangements are often minimal, they are anything but amateurish, instead evoking a suave, nostalgic, cosmopolitan melancholy. That’s probably why a song from their previous LP was a suitable score for a Gossip Girl drug overdose freak-out.