The album, released via Auckland label Arch Hill is the long awaited follow-up to the trio of James Harding (guitar/vocals), Olly Crawford-Ellis (drums/vocals), and Colin Roxburgh's (bass/vocals) debut Shortwave, released in 2009.
Shortwave was 20 minutes of hook-laden energetic power pop, and with Is This Anything? the band sticks pretty closely to its winning formula.
Latest single Your Life Could Be So Easy is typical of the album's strengths: a killer hook delivered with the infectious, fervent energy of the 1980s American punk and hardcore scene, the song also maintains an inherent sense of carefree fun.
It's a feeling that still holds true for the band despite the album lying dormant until recently.
''We actually tracked the record three years ago, so its been sitting there for a while,'' Harding tells me down the line from his Christchurch flat.
''Hearing [the songs] on record though, still felt really fresh. Some of the songs on the record that we used to play, we haven't played in years, so it's actually been surprisingly new.
''Ben from Arch Hill knew we had a record coming out, and he knew that it had been in that stage of coming out for a really long time, and it just went from there last year.
''I definitely wouldn't recommend waiting this long to release an album though!''
Despite the three-year gap between albums, don't assume the band hasn't been busy. In March and April last year the band embarked on a 19,000km, 20-day tour that took in 27 US states, with Japanese garage legends Guitar Wolf. On top of the overseas trip, the band has also played extensively within New Zealand, playing with the likes of Foo Fighters, Black Lips, Dum Dum Girls, and opening the St Jerome's Laneway Festival.
It's conditioning which has turned the band into one of the best live acts in the country.
''The States was such an awesome experience,'' Harding says.
''We'd really love to go back, and also play in Europe.''
• Dunedin rock/electronic group Eye play tonight at Taste Merchants, along with solo guitarist Stephen Kilroy and sound artist Radio Cegeste.
A trio featuring Peter Porteous (guitar, Tibetan bowl), Jon Chapman (electronics) and Peter Stapleton (drums, tapes, shortwave radio), Eye performs what The Wire (UK) has described as ''haunted electro-séances'', improvised psychedelic drones that explore the extremes of both quiet and loud noise.
Their latest LP Winterwork is due for release on Scottish label Nyali Recordings later this year.
In support is guitarist Stephen Kilroy, one of the stayers of the Dunedin music scene, as musician, producer/sound engineer, and founder of the Fish St Studios.
Radio Cegeste is a mini-FM station operated by Sally Ann McIntyre, using handmade radio transmitter, portable record player, 78rpm shellac records, theremin, bat-sonar detection device, valve radio, and field recordings. In live performance she crafts fragile, unstable sonic collages.
Catch them
• Transistors Is This Anything? Album Release Tour with Salad Boys (Chch) and local support from Kilmog, Saturday, August 17, at Queens (1 Queens Gardens). $10 on the door, Kilmog 10pm, Salad Boys 11pm, and Transistors midnight.
• Copies of the album Is This Anything? will be available for purchase Eye, Stephen Kilroy and Radio Cegeste. Tonight at Taste Merchants (Lower Stuart St). Doors 8pm, $5.
