This is just the second single from this Swindon based 5 piece (3 part male/ 2 part female) but already they've found the recipe for the kind of breezy optimistic pop that really gets under your skin. The blend of ingredients here ensures that the more you hear it the more you love it.
The title song apparently came into being after lovelorn Shaun Buswell's overdose of fruitless Google searches prompted a resolve to give up "spending hours on the internet looking for things that have already found you". There's surely a rock opera's worth of material to be had in exploring personal relationships in cyberspace but ,wisely, Buswell, the group,opt to narrow this down to the time management angle wherein facing up to the here and now of the real world aces any virtual realities. These themes are explored musically via a lushly layered arrangement where piano and violin broaden the acoustic sound gorgeously.
As the band wearily point out on their MySpace page , the male-female blend of literate orchestral pop has already drawn predictable comparisons to the likes of Prefab Sprout or Belle & Sebastian. At the risk of creating another box, Shaun Buswell's gentle vocal style also reminds me of the Pet Shop Boys' Neil Tennant for both the warmth of the tone and the precision of the phrasing.
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The other two songs on the cd are equally strong on melody and show off that the full range of this excellent band The pure voice of pianist Becky Gibbons takes lead on 'In Her Dreams' which opens with a lovely violin refrain. There's a funkier electro-bounce to 'More' which features nice harmonies between Becky and Buswell. While the closing cut'n'paste remix of 'Don't Go Wasting Time' sounds a little out of place, it does at least show a healthy willingness to open up their sound into new areas.
It all bodes well for their forthcoming album 'Buy me New Shoes' which on this evidence should be well worth finding time for.
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