Labels: Matinee Recordings
Review by: MH
Second album here from The Perfect English Weather who are Wendy and Simon from The Popguns – indie pop is the order of the day and it’s a pared down sound compared to The Popguns with a more acoustic sound for the most part and a restraint to much of the album. Soundwise, it follows on nicely from first album “Isobar Blues”. Lyrically things are downbeat, nostalgic and melancholy – the Bandcamp page tells you some of the themes – love, work, travel and parenthood – there’s a summery track on here about watching your kid dancing at a festival. I always found that The Popguns lyrics dealt with the everyday and likewise here although we’re in 2018 now and not 1992 so the everyday is a little different these days. The sound is pretty clean and Wendy’s vocals will always sound familiar to me as I first heard them in the early 90s – has it really been that long? I think it has. When I was visiting home recently my Dad had found my old box of tickets and therein was the ticket from when I first saw The Popguns supporting Cardiacs at ULU – 29th November 1991 – that was indeed a while back. “Air Travel (Interspace)” is kind of like an interlude – it sticks with the melancholia but is a drifting, subdued track with hushed, wordless vocals and a lovely guitar line. Towards the end of the album, I was thinking that “Still” sounded familiar and then realised that it was on their “English Weather” EP at the end of last year. The album rounds off back where it started with lyrics about the rain on the melancholy “Call Me When The Rain Comes”. They still know how to write bittersweet pop songs.