Laziness is clearly the catalyst to ultimate satisfaction. Or sumptuousness at least, lovely gorgeous lazy sumptuousness. The stuff Sunday afternoons, late nights in the company of cable TV and lifestyles punctuated by unwashed jeans, unpaid bills and mould growing in coffee-mugs are made of. It’s a beautiful thing. And despite what the battery-powered gym-addicted executive brigade may think it does feel great, and that they can’t take away from you. Reach your Zen and slob around a bit, it’s your right. This could be one of the laziest records you’ve ever heard. And thus is beautiful. It mimics your inevitable physical state, running off the reserves of your non-existence, and thanks you by dragging you down a little further. But nicely it leaves you enough to raise a smile.
It’s a dusty basement, desert DIY album at its most simple, built on a foundation of imagination and fat slabs of inspiration, without being too careful about measurements or where the gaffer tape goes to hold it together. It has aspects to obsess over in a glaze, it has pleasant twists and arrivals but never outright surprises, and it fancies itself as having a sense of humour. And to some extent it does. It’s hardly like it makes you laugh out loud, but then that would take effort. And unexpectedly it hails from Nottingham. But then it does follow in the tradition of British self-sufficiency, from Baby Bird to White Town to Badly Drawn Boy, heck even Gomez.
More obvious an influence is Beck and his slack-jawed skirts around skewed musical angles. As such originality’s hardly going to be call of the day when there’s much here to poke around in already, try on for size and cut the neck out of. So you’ll be conscious of a bit of Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way’ in droll opening track ‘Original’, it’s like they’ve got Kim Deal held hostage for the pushed-down-steps aceness of ‘Everything’ and you’ll almost have your finger on something for the rest. It’s like a sponge that’s been hacked up and reassembled patchwork style with loose stitching. And then used to dab down Beck’s perspiring brow, as that particular man’s never out of sight. Just take in the sunburnt vocals on the porch-blues of ‘Cigarette’ and Gonzales-esque cod-funk of ‘The Cramp’. It’s a thinking yourself out of your space record that actually goes as far as to catch the sun.