Maybe it's just me, but I get a palpable sensation of excitement when I flip over an album or take a look at its liner notes and learn the 10-track album is in and out in 25 minutes flat. My heart quickens. I grew up on oldies radio at a time when the music played largely erred on the late '50s and early '60s-an era which reveled in concise pop structures. That music placed value on the ability to cover untold ground in as economic a fashion as possible. Those songs were more than the sum of their parts.

I was similarly intrigued to find, Enchanted Chapel, the debut LP by the Young Evils-an album that skips pleasantly along, only crossing the three-minute mark on two songs. This is a band, led by songwriter Troy Nelson, that approaches the act of songwriting almost as a dare - how tight, bright and ebullient can you make each of these songs while still maintaining that certain gobsmacking efficacy that comes with taking in a great pop song.

"It was almost like an art concept," says Nelson. "I wanted to see if I could write little two-minute, catchy songs. I just missed albums like the first Violent Femmes record, or the Vaselines or the Magnetic Fields. I was listening to those three bands pretty obsessively, and I wanted to see if I could do that. A lot of bands are writing these five to seven-minute, really dark opuses, and I just missed the little catchy songs.

"I knew I needed a girl, too," Nelson continues. "So, (Mackenzie Mercer), who's also my girlfriend, thankfully can sing."

It cannot be overstated how important Mercer is to the Young Evils. While all of the band's songs are duets, Nelson and Mercer never trade verses back and forth. Every syllable is accompanied by a male and female voice. Their easy melodies and casual phrasing aid in consistently giving off the air of effortlessness, which helps the album to sail by even smoother than it would have otherwise. Because of the boy/girl dynamic and the old-fashioned, slightly folky songwriting, comparisons can be made to the Young Evils and another Seattle outfit, the Dutchess and the Duke. But, where the Dutchess and the Duke embrace the attitude and cigarette smokiness of bands like the Rolling Stones, the Young Evils more frequently come across sweeter, more innocent, like a band that would light up a college radio station and excite the young people on weekends in cars with friends.

"All the reviews that we saw of our record, as positive as they were, they always had the word 'cute,'" says Nelson. "We just got done recording our new EP. The newer stuff has a little more of a rock swagger to it. It's a little darker."

While I welcome the Young Evils' preemptive strike against reviewers calling the band cute ever again, I hope they keep their songwriting as strong as it's been.

After all, we need dark pop songs as badly as we need the light ones.

[The New Frontier Lounge, The Young Evils, Oh Dear!, Not From Brooklyn, Thursday, Jan. 5, 9 p.m., Cover TBA, 301 E. 25^th St, Tacoma, 253.572.4020]