Some debuts are so accomplished that I jot a note next to the band’s name on my Big List O’ New Bands: “Check they’re actually new”.

Julian Fulton and the Zombie Gospel are one of these bands whose inherent  ability caused me to question their authenticity. This is today’s reward for hard work and hundreds of hours of practice: suspicion. This world, eh?

Still, it raises a larger question, which is of huge importance: just because bands can now write, record, release and promote a song all on their own, all on the same day, should they?

There is more extremely average music floating around than ever before: songs that should have been aborted, culled or never left the rehearsal room – or at least spent a lot longer in it.

Julian Fulton and the Zombie Gospel are one of the bands that have been holed up in rehearsal for a long time. You can tell by the way the songs are, you know, accomplished.

Lie is the work of a band who have put in the hours, gained the callouses, had the arguments and hit the lows as well as the highs. It’s a rambling but focussed song of minor theatricality, restrained and shambolic; and it’s about love, of course.

Julian Fulton and the Zombie Gospel seem to have a idea of how to do things properly: good songs, well written, refined , re-written; then launch with a bang. If they get big, they only have themselves to blame. And that’s cheerfully refreshing.

MORE: julianfulton.com