The un-twee indie song has had some bad press lately. But then that isn’t surprising when the most successful examples of it at the moment come from Travis, and Starsailor – nice tunes but they lack a bit of oompf shall we say?

“Your existence is burnt toast. That’s the bit I love the most. Your existence is cold tea. That’s the bit that tickles me.” sings Ricky “Glaz” Cummings in a Mancunian twang on In Your Element as the whole song whoooshes upwards to explode into a harmonied guitar twanging, jangly drummed (can you have jangly drums? I guess you can. Please feel free to nominate me for Private Eye’s Pseuds’ Corner.) carefree SONG. With a beginning, a middle, an end, a (short) guitar solo and a false ending. They don’t make them like this anymore. OI!! Fran from Travis, Chris from Coldplay and James From Starsailor: you taking notes or what!? Head your paper: “Well constructed songs that still manage to stay interesting despite following conventions”. Got it?

Ehrich Weisz is the second song here. On this Glaz sings like a man wrapped in considerable amounts of cotton wool as alternately guitars rage about him drowning out the vocals before quietening down to an intense background noise only to start up again, leaving Glaz to shout out the vocals.

This is in contrast to the last song here, Anton Kinsgway, again about a character, and again with the loud/ quiet format but not as intense as the sound just grows until it seems to fill out the song which makes for a more interesting sound.

Now* Monomania*, pay attention: don’t talk crap in your interviews about how “the songs speak for themselves”. They’re good, but it would be a shame to be labelled the next Coldplay when your songs are better.