The Rumble Strips - Girls and Weather

There is a strain of eccentricity running through British indie at the moment, a kind of "daft rock" evidenced by the likes of Tiny Dancers and The Mules; bands that may make a fine racket, but are ultimately more amusing than engaging, and unfortunately The Rumble Strips' debut album seems to suffer from the same tragedy. There are certainly plenty of chuckles to be had, such as on Motorcycle, where a young guy wishes his bike was a "geek-losing" motorcycle, then all the girls would love him. It's hard to get past the fact, however, that despite being an album full of imagination, that said imagination is mostly frontman Charles Waller imagining himself as being Kevin Rowlands, fronting his own gang of Young Soul Rebels. And, although all the way through Girls and Weather the drums thunder, the piano plinks and plonks and the brass parps relentlessly, (with the buoyant Girls and Boys In Love being the most obvious sounding stab at a Come On Eileen moment), it's hard to foresee a drunken boogie to any of these tunes at the wedding discos of the future. [Barry Jackson]