Every so often, all you really need is some solid, honest-to-goodness, lip-smacking power-pop. And just to satisfy our craving God occasionally casts down the likes of Bob Mould and Sugar, the Teenage Fanclub, the Lemonheads, Foo Fighters and the Boo Radleys, planting a big fat buzzing chorus atop of a Velcro hook, some big, bright jangling guitars, some impossible, reckless optimism and the kind of nutmeging, dummying lyrical runs they could quite easily qualify for a place in the Brazilian national football team. The stuff of dreams? Well, maybe.
Boasting an enviable indie-pop pedigree that includes turns with Sarah Cracknell of St Etienne, Felt, Primal Scream and Luke Haines, the bass-playing Mick Bund enlists Detroit’s ‘anything goes’ The Fags and comes up with a dozen or so songs brimming with lyrical confidence, thrashing incorruptibility and chord-jangling excellence. Whipping things up right from the word go: ‘Hello Hello’. With a bone-rattling bass sound you could use as the foundations for the next World Trade Centre and choruses you could hang your coat on, tracks like ‘Hello Hello’, ‘In Everything’, ‘End Of The World’, ‘Mr Magpie’ and ‘Indian Ink’ provide the kind of dedicated audio air supply you’ve been waiting for ever since Costello stopped pumping it up and falling down and began shipbuilding instead. Not that its all hell-for-leather chorus-fodder, ‘Peace and Love’ offers up some lightly psychedelic screams and some edgy, shuffling tempos, whilst the lush, drifting romance of songs like ‘Moving On’, ‘Bomb Poem’ and ‘Never Meant To Be’ tender the kind of loafing 60s retro perfected previously by Teenage Fanclub, Oasis, Super Furry Animals, Garlic and the marvellous Radleys.
Re-packaged, refashioned and banged out on Poptones or Red Ink along with bands like The Rifles in the UK this could easily make the grade. There’s a couple of red-herrings, sure, but was there ever a successful catch that didn’t?
Footietastic.