>I watched a BBC4 documentary about Britpop the other day. It’ll be on Youtube if you look for it. There’s loads of documentaries about Britpop, possibly because it was such a recent popular period in music, and possibly because it’s all very simple to explain: UK bands get bored by grunge, look back to the 60′s, make great songs, get coke bloat and collapse in on themselves.

However, it ended with One Very Important Thought: that trailblazing Britpop wonders like Suede, Blur and Pulp ultimately didn’t affect music much at all – the bands that traded in inane, emotion-lite songs with huge, soft choruses, like Oasis and the Verve have spawned the similar big bands of today – I’m waggling my finger at you, Coldplay and Snow Patrol.

The point is that the early 90′s were a fertile time for actually new, interesting music, before giving way back to cruddy average music. And so when I listened to Today’s New Band, Sweden’s Envelopes, I immediately thought of the early 90′s. Possibly because their fabulous song Sister In Love somehow straddles the late 80′s and early 90′s, whilst luckily missing Shoegaze altogether – no mean feat. “Is your sister in love?” chants the chorus, joyously pinging from person to person in the party, kissing each on the cheek.

The chorus is so much fun, they don’t waste much time on verses and get there as soon as possible, and Freejazz, similarly, is a big, fun-tastic romp through a delirous chorus. Party even is as cheeky enough to interpolate some of Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart, and guess what – it works. Brilliant. If only all music could stop and deviate from here. Listen to their great songs right here!