Slow Club Yeah So Review

Sheffield duo Slow Club shun romantic notions: they formed at school. Simple. They use random objects including chairs as percussion because random objects sometimes make a good sound. Also simple.

Simplicity is something Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor clearly aren't afraid of: the backbone of their debut album is a range of uncomplicated ideas executed brilliantly and brazenly by a band of two. A layer of witty and often nonsensical lyrics, and improvised percussive embellishments add the differentiation. Lo and behold, Yeah So is immediately more than one could expect given its authors' unhelpful Nu-Folk tag.

Slow Club landed themselves the generic millstone through associations with the likes of Laura Marling and Tilly and the Wall, but the variety on offer here spans rockabilly on It Doesn't Have To Be Beautiful, garage during Giving Up On Love and even a bit of shoegaze with the aptly titled I Was Unconscious, So It Was A Dream.

Watson displays an adaptable attitude to his guitar, and so while Come On Youth is tremulous and climatic, the gentle picking on Trophy Room is evocative of the late summer scene mentioned in its lyrics.

Lyrical content is a key characteristic: single Because We're Dead makes little sense and refers to talking mice, while the second part of closer Our Most Brilliant Friends boasts the geniously comic line, ''The bones inside my shins are crumbling/ It's from all the crunking I’ve been doing''. Not often does a song offer the dual selling points of brilliant tune (which starts sounding something like an acoustic version of Springsteen's Dancing In The Dark) and a reason to have a satisfying belly laugh.

Cynics might see them as impossibly twee, but with their perceptive humour and self-awareness Slow Club prove they're not all surface and definitely not so silly.