I find myself rather enjoying this, despite a million reasons not to.  I find my rational self (stop sniggering) pointing out stuff I usually don’t like, and my instinctive self just laughing and saying ‘yeah, but so what, it’s good‘!

I’ll qualify that slightly.  I am not blown away by this album, and I doubt it is going to set my world alight; it tails off a fair bit towards the end, and it contains quite a few elements I usually don’t like at all.

It sounds, for example, just a little close to that Hard-Fi/Ordinary Boys* axis of evil at times, but never enough that it really gets my back up.  It sounds very, very Beatlesy here and there too, but never so much that I find myself writing it off as some sort of Britpoppy pastiche.  There’s a touch of rawk in the guitars at times as well, something else which usually puts me off a bit, but somehow doesn’t.

So what is it that I do like so much about this then?  Well it’s exuberantly good fun, for starters.  It may be Beatlesy, but there’s a reckless garage aspect to it as well, which verges to the edges of CBGB’s punk at times (Heavy Hand springs to mind), before veering sharply back to sunny pop on the next song.  That kind of musical ADHD keeps the album from getting at all sluggish, and keeps the listener on their toes pretty much throughout.

If I’m being honest, I think they run just a little short of tunes towards the end of the record, in the sense that my compulsion to sing along and drum on my desk here at Proper Job with my thumbs does wane somewhat.  The last three songs in particular lack the sprightliness of the first half of the album, and kind of end things on a downer for me, but this is nevertheless a really promising debut album.

Drink Up Buttercup – Seasickness Pills

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Drink Up Buttercup – Doggy Head

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*In my second excessive use of asterisks moment of the day, I must confess that I did and do actually quite like some Ordinary Boys songs, I jsut despise the idea of them, particularly since that Celebrity Big Brother debacle which was so painful it made my teeth hurt, even though I never actually watched a moment of it.