Spearmint

Twenty years on from their debut ‘A week away’, indie-pen-dancers Spearmint are back with ‘Are you from the future?’ released on their own hitBACK label.

Behold Indie-pop’s best preserved mystery of history, however, here mass ignorance only equals pop bliss as these artisanal thoroughbreds return to palette cleanse their way to your head and heart. Sweeping, swooping strings, swooning, mooning wordsmithery, the right side of twee and never dull nor dumb, cleverly literate with literal endeavours. What more could you ask for?

The ever-so-timely, never more relevant ‘Pick the papers up’ is a welcome assault on the organs of division, propagators of hate, the prints of darkness, The Sun, The Express and the Daily Mail, backers of the nation’s former porker-poker, failed PR blagger, ‘Call me Dave’ Cameron (‘he let the people down, betrayed us all, just to stay in power’ and now his equally morally bankrupt ‘chum’ Boris Johnson. The song acts as an apologia to the younger generation and the uncertain future they face. With a general (s)election looming across the isles this is a necessary demand to be hyper-aware of the media machinations.

‘Senseless’ superlatively articulates the vicissitudes, the vagaries, the varied voyages of the good ship Attraction’s Rules – specifically how a ‘stranger’ can become (em)bedded with(in), all rational(e) and sense jettisoned overboard. On 2.05 as Shirley Lee ponders ‘You wouldn’t just stop someone on the street and take them home with you … would you?’ the music gloriously captures that whooshing rush of gushing lust, emotions all a-motion, evoking Pulp at their most vulnerably aware. The feel-good hit of any season.

This is an album that thematically takes in middle age worries, as late stage concerns permeate the no-getting-away-from-fate accompli of ‘It won’t happen to me’ and ‘I don’t sleep well without you’ love songs with a twist.

Wry, spry and arch in all the right ways, always ahead of the curve when it comes to touching a nerve, forever top of the game when amour is the name. Spearmint are back to reclaim the present.