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- Summary: The third full-length release from the solo project of Lifeguard's Kai Slater features 21 tracks.
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- Record Label: K Records / K.
- Genre(s): Pop/Rock, Alternative/Indie Rock
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Score distribution:
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Positive: 7 out of 7
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Mixed: 0 out of 7
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Negative: 0 out of 7
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Dec 1, 2025Balloon Balloon Balloon is pure pop music for now-and-then people, skillfully crafted from bits and bobs of the past, then melded together into a sound that is exactly what the smoothed-out, homogenous mid-2020s need.
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Dec 1, 2025Even as its canvas stretches wide enough to accommodate the aggressive and experimental extremities of the Sharp Pins sound, Balloon Balloon Balloon is ultimately a showcase of Slater doing what he does best: filtering Beatles-‘65 joy through Beatles-‘66 drugs to hit the sweet spot between winsome and whimsical.
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Dec 1, 2025Slater has found a way of collating a raft of familiar guitar tropes and injecting them with fresh energy. He seems to have ideas simply pouring out of him, plus enough of a quality-control filter to stack up an album’s worth of songs that fizz with inspiration.
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Dec 5, 2025Balloon Balloon Balloon is a slow burn of a record that might take time to click, but if you give it the space it deserves, savoring it in small doses and letting the words ruminate, there is so much to be discovered.
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MojoDec 9, 2025The packed tracklist suggests perfectly imperfect nuggets. ... The haunted, magical lies of Gonna Learn Too Crawl, meanwhile, invite close listening to his more muted, intimate moments, too. [Feb 2026, p.81]
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Dec 1, 2025Balloon Balloon Balloon is not Slater’s best album of 2025—it’s probably not even his second best—but any record that evokes the snotty power pop of Guitar Romantic is worth investigating in my book.
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Dec 10, 2025With Balloon Balloon Balloon, Sharp Pins make another solid effort that should be lauded for its authentic representation, even if we are expected to overlook the question of what makes them one-of-a-kind.