Perhaps it’s the dizzying depth of the new bands sprouting in the Manchester music scene at the moment, or perhaps it’s sheer, dumb, laziness on my part.

Admittedly, the latter is the most likely, though there are just so many fascinating bands in and around Manchester now, that you, and I, would be forgiven for assuming the former as most probable.

Either way, I ought to have covered Young British Artists months ago. I didn’t though, so today am making amends by way of a breathlessly enthusiastic slew of praise-slurry.

It’s simple: listen to Lived In Skin, and tell me that it isn’t as exciting and – yikes – fresh sounding a song as you’ve heard for a long time.

Young British Artists // Lived In Skin

Maybe it’s the driving, relentless drums, or maybe it’s the swirl of  – urgh – intellect that surrounds the song. I think that it’s that the band sound like they know what they’re doing, where they’re going, and how they’re going to get there. You don’t need to know those details – just feel the confidence, the desire, the plan.

Young British Artists shoot pinholes of laser-light through the fug, and deliver songs more taut, more deliberately designed and more attack-minded than the majority of their contemporaries. Jolts of pleasure, life, and bright, white light. Excellent.

www.myspace.com/youngbritishartists

Photograph by Sanna Berger