At this point in time it isn't easy to praise music for good songwriting. Harder still is to do it justice. Contemporary art needs a gimmick or at the very least some sort of mass appeal (ironically, modern mass appeal could be nothing more than a gimmick). So - how do you make a case for, say, Little Love and the Friendly Vibes?
I got to this band via the Plimptons and GUMS! - two Scottish bands whose back (there's nothing but 'back' at this point) catalogue is well worth exploring. By turns tuneful and rowdy (and twee - mostly in the case of GUMS!), they were the perfect proof that the amount of good music you will never hear is depressingly huge.
So then. Little Love and the Friendly Vibes (link here).
To paraphrase the excellent album title, it's more of the same - but different. The punk edge is obvious, otherwise it's great melodies drenched in that unmistakably playful attitude you get in the better parts of Scotland. The high points are, indeed, very high, and the insanely catchy 'hits' like "Jealous" and "Talk To Me" will not leave your head for days.
I'm not crazy about the Sex Pistols-lite singing which gets blatantly excessive in a few places (the overly simplistic "Team Leader" comes to mind), but as long as they can write a beauty like "After Hours" or the title song - I'm all right. Even if that does highlight the fact that this is a bloody talented group of people in search of identity.
In the meantime, you won't convince me that "More Than You Can Stand" has a stronger tune than classic Comet Gain (and I love Comet Gain). Little Love and the Friendly Vibes, however, are more fun than wistful. And try as I might, I can't hold that against them.