Little shiny things

While squinting at one of those tiny rectangles of text excreted between pictures of the Horrors' haircuts in this week's NME, I noticed a band called the Leisure Society's new album get a bit of a monstering. The only bit of useful information I could gleam from the typically phoned-in review was that the band formed from a group who used to count Shane Meadows and Paddy Considine among their members. Yeah, before making some of the best British kitchen-sink cinema of the last decade, they were in a psych-folk group together. How my love for those two grows and grows.


Unsurprisingly, it turns out Mr NME was a bit of a reactionary clam-nut in his review and The Leisure Society's album is all sorts of terrific. It will sound familiar to fans of Dead Mans Shoes and A Room for Romeo Brass 'cos lead songwriter Nick Hemming not only composed the tingly instrumental interludes heard in those films but also helped cherry pick their awesome soundtracks. Dead Man's Shoes OST, on Warp, is a classic.

The album, called Sleeper, is sterling Brit folk in the tradition of Adem Ilhan or Badly Drawn Boy before his Bruce Springsteen obsession damaged his understated talent. You'll hear hints of Paul McCartney, Fairport Convention and even The Incredible String Band in these songs too. With so much acclaimed contemporary folk coming from American artists such as Bon Iver and Fleet Foxes it is refreshing to hear a sound so resolutely English.

The NME journo seemed to dole out his 3/10 review on the grounds that the album contains banjo, glockenspiel and ukulele. I mean how could they? How could they touch those Satanic instruments? Those instruments Ian Curtis raged so ferociously against to make way for the incandescent supernova of originality that is White Lies to stick it to the man and bravely blow the MTV2 playlist apart.

Out of an album of gems it is hard to cherry pick. But this song is great.

MP3: The Leisure Society-A matter of time