New : September Girls - 'Cursing the Sea'

New Year! Out with the old and in with the new!! I was gonna forsake listening to the debut by Irish fuzz kittens September Girls on the grounds that it sounds quite a lot like loads of other records I already own and instead devote my time to discovering new styles of music like Surinamese nose flute polka metal but in the end I decided to give it a go just in case it was any good after all. A risk worth taking as it turns out - 'Cursing the Sea' won't be unchartered territory for all you folks out there who got a buzz from the Vivian/Dum Dum/Best Coast gaggle of shoegazey chick bands that surfaced at the end of the noughties but the gals have a few aces up their own collective sleeve to mark themselves out as a juicy prospect. There's a cheeky splattering of Farfiza organ chucked in there for good measure which gives the material a kinda gothy batcave twist - it reminds me a bit of the Horrors' ratchety debut before they knew how to play their instruments properly, smoky and simple but packed with catchy riffs and reverberant underground charm. I'm not sure whether they've cooked up an image to go with the music to rival the skinny jeans Hammer Horror shtick Faris Badwan and co were rocking back in 2007 but to their credit they don't really need one, the tunes are more than capable of doing the talking for them and they bash out a dozen loveable bass-heavy bliss bombs pitched somewhere between the Go-Gos and the Raveonettes, mired in feedback and fuzz but still packing enough hairspray and Friday night spark to stay above the doldrums. There's even a shade of 'Different Light' era Bangles on here, something about the harmonies and chiming pop hooks - it's perhaps no coincidence that Susannah Hoffs and co covered the very same Big Star tune from which the band take their name back in their 80s heyday. It took me a couple of spins to get into this but once I did it stayed on my headphones like the first Vivian Girls record back in the day, sweet enough to play again and again - thereby hangs perhaps its only weakness, the Vivs' debut was a rush of energy that burnt out before losing focus and whilst 'Cursing the Sea' clocks in at an economical 37 minutes there's still room for a bit of filler, the flair of its opening and closing salvos giving way to a slightly directionless midsection. But the strongest passages are good enough to make up for the shortfall, the opening flurry of activity dropping in anthemic fuzz pop like 'Another Love Song' and single 'Heartbeats' whilst the LP's coda is even more appealing, ending things with the stylish swish-off of 'Secret Lovers' and 'Sisters' bolstered by the almost impossibly catchy 'Someone New' which is good enough to become their own 'Jail La La' if things take off. There's plenty to look forward to already this year and this is a thoroughly promising debut to get things off to a flyer.

Check out : 'Someone New' if you can find it online (I can't) or the promo for 'Heartbeats'.