Not entirely irrelevant preambling fact: Blue Whales are the loudest thing 0n earth – louder than volcanoes and bombs.

There’s nothing more exhilarating than Big Noise Done Correctly. Every teenager with a Vauxhall Nova and a Bonkers! CD knows that.

But what separates horribly-generic-crunchy-guitar-noise from deftly-assembled-swoon-fuzz-thrash? The truth is that there’s about a cigarette paper’s distance between them, and you can just as easily pop through from one to the other.

So my first listen to Playlounge‘s Orange Friends was a fraught experience, as I battled the tiny voice that kept piping up, “just you wait – it’ll go all Nu-Metal in a moment.” It didn’t. I rejoiced. This is a brilliant song.

Very few songs are this thin, but dense; this basic, but multi-layered; this wildly base, but strangely touching. Even fewer songs manage to be all these things at once.

Orange Friends is weighty, simple, golden, cast-off. It’s so endlessly pleasing and unironic, I could hardly stop smiling.

I think there are only two thrusting young upstarts in Playlounge. Two-man bands seem to have something about them. (Really) Excellent.

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