2009!

This year just gets better and better. 2009 did start very slowly but at least once every week these past two months there’s been something new and shiny to get excited about.

A second single this year from Brilliant Colors and a second classic. Highly Evolved is one insistent riff with the brevity and wayward tunesmithery of Beat Happening and the giddy pop drama of those early Velocity Girl singles. Punk-pop purists will be thrilled to learn that Highly Evolved features a simple and very effective guitar solo at the end.

Standard Fare fuck yeah! Their debut single, Dancing, is mesmerising. It’s a skewed art-pop take on Pavement’s coupling of angular noise and smart lyrics, and – joy upon joys – only eclipsed in quality by the wonder of their other songs. They should be massive. I want an album. Now.

Surely there can be no way that Standard Fare will meet the apathy that Pavement-style Yorkshire bedfellows The Old House and Piskie Sits have undeservedly suffered…