Straylings
Album: Entertainment on Foreign Grounds
Label: Deadpan
Tracks: 11
Website: www.facebook.com/straylings

Edgily psychedelic, the dark, creeping underbelly of high times and low lives, Straylings are clearly as familiar with the sharp guitar clang of The Jam, Echo & the Bunnymen and The Cure circa 1980 as they are the vacant chemical trips of Jefferson Airplane, the Velvets and even Neil Young's more needly moments.

Singer Dana Zeera recalls Siouxsie Sioux as readily as she does Grace Slick, settling in the slim middle ground between Polly Harvey and Florence Welch. Guitarist Oliver Drake supplies restless soundscapes in which to house that demanding voice, but he's no slavish retro geek as the cathouse piano and 3:4 lurch of The Spoils displays, underpinning his fuzzy guitar sculpted from the School of Blixa Bargeld.

Marie & the Dusty Lands should bring the duo the kind of attention currently being lavished on lesser talents with its Shins-esque undertow, while Carver's Kicks plays with country music, Kings of the Mire touches American Gothic cabaret and Arcadian Moon knocks on Julian Cope's door to see what the old Arch Drude has got going on.

Thoroughly intriguing and a genuine surprise. Tidy.

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk