Viva Stereo - Roar Lion Roar

Fence Collective mainstays Viva Stereo are stretched to the limits by personal circumstances: with members scattered from Aberdeen to Leicester, it's a wonder they can get it together enough to record, never mind create an album that provides such an honest snapshot of their current psyche as Roar Lion Roar, their third effort. The inevitable Friday night out with the same friends at the same places is the album's loose theme, and its kitsch digital instrumentation seems like an affectionate jab at the music that soundtracks nights in a faceless everypub. The thin anti-vocals are straitjacketed by ticky machine rhythms and synth buzzes, inescapably catchy in their clicky repetition, and the strings and waves of feedback squall which envelop them. Viva Stereo have an ability to find the beauty in the banal which lends Roar Lion Roar its own remarkable quality. [Gillian Watson]