If, as postulated by many, Scandinavian bands have a particularly recognisable sound (think: choruses of joy, and verses replaced by more choruses), then what of Liverpool, a city that has punched above its weight since pop music began?
My brain’s instant Grab-Bag O’ Liverpudlian musical clichés consists of: sea-shanty pop/jangly curiousness/She Loves You YeahYeahYeah.
And, you know, these rules seem to be justified, especially if applied to Liverpudlian/Mancunian band Imaginary Friend, who have been together for about five minutes, and yet, in Lost at Sea, have recorded a song with the easy confidence and blithe panache of a band that has been around the block a few times.
Lost At Sea betrays the band’s knack for melody, song construction and structure: you know, all the boring, essential stuff. That their carefree attitude is carefully woven into these sonic shapes is both a casually instinctive move and their stroke of ingenuity.
Because a song like Lost at Sea is not only a cute song with a dashing, clinically brief melody, it could well be, along with a couple of their other equally sharp songs, the stick that all the candyfloss that is the rest of the being-in-a-band nonsense can hang off. Extremely promising stuff.