Recorded a floor below a newborn at Incremental Studios with Cameron Smith, Tuff 2B Tender contemplates time, age, disaster and death in whip-smart pop fashion. Olivia’s World’s cutting lyricism and clear-eyed melodies ponder on alternate timelines, question the empty gestures of virtue signaling and grasp with impending catastrophes. Alice Rezende pictures a post-apocalyptic plantopia on “Grassland,” an image cast back by the songwriter as a desire to skip the city for a more tranquil and sprawling scene. “I’m just looking for a place to call my grassland/Everybody just wants a place to call their grassland.”

Opening track “Debutante” recounts Rezende’s experiences playing in bands and what it means to start over, considering the cyclical tilling of ideas, spaces and musicians in nostalgia-tinged harmonies from guitarist Tina Agic and bassist Joe Saxby. With Ben Napier filling out percussion, the quartet order anthemic pop hooks between sharp and upbeat punk, channelling the overt charm of Tiger Trap’s brightest tunes and the push of Sleater Kinney’s knottiest riffs. Again pairing up with Seattle-based tape label Lost Sound Tapes (Richard Album, Temporary Eyesore), Olivia’s World continue to glimmer as one of the most exciting twee-revivalist acts in operation.

Aside from the band’s innate knack for catchy arrangement and undeniable charisma, Alice Rezende’s thoughtful, empathetic lyricism further sets Olivia’s World apart from their contemporaries. Rezende’s perspective-seeking words reveal lush and imaginative imagery; literary and pensive verses mirroring the author’s transoceanic experiences through time and space. Tenderness sure can be tough but Olivia’s World possess the sensitivity and awareness to assess big-picture issues of the future, present and past. Despite its exterior pop sheen, Tuff 2B Tender is a ruminative exercise in existing - existing as a bandmate, as a friend, as a human.