Kevin Bronson on October 2nd, 2014

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Here’s one that’ll fit snugly on your shelf in between those Cocteau Twins, Psychedelic Furs, Echo & the Bunnymen and New Order records. (Huh, you don’t have such a shelf? What are you, new?) Stranger Kings are an Orange County-based four-piece launched by guitarist Eric Campuzano and bassist Herb Grimaud. The latter made ambient rock as the Sound Gallery after spending time in long-running shoegaze outfit the Violent Burning. Campuzano played with the late, great popgazers the Lassie Foundation, who faded away after TLF’s other guitarist Jeff Schroeder joined Smashing Pumpkins. With the addition of singer Holly Nelson and drummer Brady Esquivel, Stranger Kings unchain their Anglophile urges so unrepentantly you’ll miss your coiffed mullet. Of course, it’s ’80s music made by people who quite possibly were around for the opening weekend of “The Breakfast Club,” so the songs on the quartet’s full-length “Stranger Kings” (out this week) have a certain Gen X romanticism that was all but suffocated in later decades. From that time-capsule bass line in “Lay Low” to the ethereal shoegazing of “Katherine,” this one’s a lot of fun.

||| Stream: “Lay Low,” “Katherine” and “All of Everything”