You want in?

At last, in a time when bands have little or no consideration for a bit of spit and polish and even less time invested in learning the joyous craft of the pop single, along comes a band to prod us in the chest with their umbrellas and take us to task. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.

‘Buckle Up, Sunshine!’ - suited and booted Friends Of The Bride’s second single - is a reviving, coolest-mountain-water-in-the-face type of song, the pop staple of any sensible DJ in the land and a call to arms in an age of indolent round shouldery and disagreeable beards. All cocky bassline and economic guitars, its insistently nagging rhythm and bolshy lyrics, sung with swaggering gusto by Mr Bobby Grindrod, should make us all blissfully aware of a nascent call-to-arms and to take heed, even if it’s only to polish our shoes more often. If milkmen still exist, you just know this is the song they would whistle every morning.

A lesson that reminds us that substance and style can co-exist: chest out, stomach in, it’s time for some pure-pop swingdie.