This Many Boyfriends – This Many Boyfriends

This Many Boyfriends’ scrappy-go-lucky debut wears its DNA like so many button badges. It’s in their name, a nod to Beat Happening. It’s in their titles, with Tina Weymouth opening the album and I Don’t Like You (‘Cos You Don’t Like the Pastels) returning from 2010’s Getting A Life With EP. And it’s in their lyrics (boy, is it in their lyrics), stocked with nods to The Go-Betweens, Orange Juice and dozens more indie-pop darlings.

But most of all, it’s in the music itself. Sometimes, the quotations are overt, with Young Lovers Go Pop! sharing more than exclamation marks with You! Me! Dancing!. But their genre-worship is also present in more diffuse form – in the jangling guitar tones, and singer Richard’s insouciant, punk-Morrissey delivery. The results are lightweight but knowingly so – irritatingly so if you’re looking for even the slightest bit of parameter-testing, but wonderfully so if you share their tastes.