Unless you’ve been paying attention, you may well have dismissed Brighton moppets Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong as just another crew of sub-Libertine Britrock plodders, to be filed, and dismissed, alongside Wombats/Kooks/Pigeon Detectives et al. Certainly, they’re hard to warm to live: an actor of some experience (you might have caught him in Dublin Castle-shot medieval sauce-fest The Tudors) Lean is a bit of a stage brat, all sucked in cheek bones, preening flourishes and audience-baiting hooey.
But on record, things are very different: their debut album is awash with yearning psych rock; plaintive guitar chimes and lashings of damp-cheeked wistfulness. Above all, this is an LP stuffed with gooey hooks: ‘Lucio Starts Fires’ is sixth form Coldplay that climaxes in a swoonworthy chorus; ‘Baby’ delivers heroic chamber pop in a British Sea Power vein; the discordant tremble of ‘Lonely Buoy’ offers a glimpse of the insecurities behind Lean’s dandy exterior. Granted, there are moments where it all goes a tad Razorlight: ‘Where Do You Go’ starts, promisingly, with a spoken word intro but quickly loses its footing in a miasma of off-the-shelf Brit-fop whilst ‘Brooklyn’ is a soupy B-side that should have been binned at birth. It’s a shame there are so many fumbles, especially over the record’s closing strait – with a smidgeon more quality control, Joe Lean... could have been a doozy.