There’s a sense of comfortable dislocation that comes from listening to Serenaide’s ‘The Other End of the Receiver’.
Over a decade ago my cold Sheffield bedsit would be filled with the thin white jangle of indie pop, and now here it comes again, only this time from a bunch of kids half a world away in the steam of Singapore and Indonesia, simultaneously incongruous and yet completely right. And it connects, and it makes sense, and I could be listening to early nineties guitar driven tracks from 4AD or Factory Records.
Track one ‘The Sweetest’, for example, sounds like a soft-focus ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, karaoke Cure, sweet, clumsy and yearning, while ‘The Hands of the Doctor’ sounds like a Smiths tribute – not in the tired, parasitical sense but in an adoring way, with bouncing guitars, dry one liners and choruses festooned with ‘la-la-las’ like Morrissey’s urbane yodels.
In ‘Sofa Series’ singer Pheroz Yusuf’s voice drops to a conspiratorial mumble a la Jarvis Cocker during the verses before springing into choruses worthy of a place on His’n’Hers.
And at all points in between, there is a string of songs with paper thin vocals that float and emote over New Order guitar runs – indie songs that evoke everything from the Wannadies to the Raveonettes, although as with any good band, all appropriated sounds become their own and what we have is an album of ten simple and unassuming tracks.
It probably doesn’t bother Serenaide that they are a thousand miles away from the rock’n’roll cities of the moment, nevertheless it would be a shame for them not to be mentioned in the same breath as the bands over here who, with the help of huge PR companies, are dominating the airwaves right now.
And so, from the other end of the receiver: ten charming tracks and a sublime sense of a cold Sheffield bedsit, a thousand miles and half a world away.
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