This is fun. But good it isn’t, and clean it ain’t. I mean, it’s good – audaciously so at points – but it’s not good. It’s really quite bad, if you know what we mean? It’s steal a milk float and churn up your neighbour’s rose garden in glorious slow motion fun, drink your grandma’s best rum and surf up and down the stairs on her Stanna-lift wearing a tea cosy on your head kind of larks. Proper “ooooph, you little fucker” and shaking your fist stuff. It is solid gold, packed tight, four-star discotheque-creaming pop music made by oddball indie kids with uneven fringes who could not care less about much and who throw so much frigging paint at the wall that they can’t help but end up with a day-glo Picasso from time to time. Law of averages. Except they’ve edited the bad stuff out more or less. It could all just end up as pretentious kitsch, but it’s so very disposable and high-sugar satisfying that it doesn’t get chance to.
They’re sarcastic and geek-groovy like Art Brut, reckless like Test Icicles (minus the aggression) and they’ve undoubtedly been fertilised by Pavement, Weezer and Guided By Voices records aplenty. But they’re really driven by the concept of the big tune, whatever shape that comes in, and in spite of sharing history and choppy guitars with Franz Ferdinand it is their character not their style that makes impressions here.
So ‘Arcade Precinct’ bursts the boundaries to sound like Lou Reed’s ‘Vicious’ as it would be done by white suburban kids trying to mimic De La Soul, ‘Switch’ is Salt ‘N’ Peppa’s 80s classic ‘Push It’ as done by The Bloodhound Gang, but they still manage to sound like foolhardy oiks just having big fun with their guitars. And the general tone of the record? “I’m here with my friends and we’re taking some drugs, it’s such fun we’ll be taking some more soon” and “my cult status keeps me alive, my cult status keeps me fucking your wife” should give you the mark of these chaps. Fun fun fun and not going home to face the consequences.