For Simon Fowler and Ocean Colour Scene life is an endless series of sunny afternoons, waterloo sunsets, and loafing around boutiques on Carnaby Street in your Chelsea boots and your favourite crewneck sweater. Fowler is still growling as sweetly as the engine on his Lambretta and the band are still churning out songs about Monday mornings, weekend living, waiting for trains and buses and the barmaid knowing your name. In some respects it’s a bit like the last forty years never happened. Like the Jam never split, like mini-skirts never went out of fashion, like Paul McCartney still had a way with a tune and Ronnie Lane and Steve Marriot hadn’t yet put the locks on the gate at Itchycoo Park. And as such, you can’t really assess the success of the record on any other basis. From the first rippling bass riffs of wriggling psych-rock opener, ‘100 Floors of Perception’ (about the financial crisis) to the woozy, reflective after hours of the ivory tinkling ‘What’s Mine Is Yours’, the boy’s new album, Saturday is like slipping on an old pair of jeans, going down to you allotment and letting the full and uncomplicated Englishness of village life come washing over you like the gravy on your roast. Believe it or not, but Cool Britannia is still cool in certain areas of Birmingham.
Cue up those stirring, sixties string arrangements, blow the froth from your pint and punch the air like it was the final minutes of the FA Cup final Ocean Colour Scene have a got a new album out – and it’s as bold, as solid and as reassuringly familiar as the wood that makes up the bar down your local. These Mods are preserved in amber.