Fashion mags have been drooling over Sheffield’s Long Blondes for months now – a pavlovian reaction, one guesses, to frontwoman Kate Jackson’s knack for looking quite dapper in a vintage neck cravat. Yet Someone To Drive You Home, the band’s debut , is worth hyping for musical reasons alone. A dense rush of post-britpop guitars and Blondie sing-alongs, the album sees Jackson and her troops attempting an ambitious marriage of the arty and the bubble-gum. When it comes off, the results are both smart and spectacular – it’s a long time, indeed, since a first record arrived steeped in much spiky, sparkling brio.
Early singles ‘Lust In Movies’ and ‘Giddy Stratospheres’ are the album’s immediate stand-outs. Both glide on dreamy, but insistent guitars before being slapped about the face by Jackson’s spunky vocal turn. Elsewhere, ‘Once And Never Again’ is, in the healthiest sense, pub-rock Belle and Sebastian; ‘Only Lovers Left Live’ hangs somewhere between an upbeat St Etienne and a non-rubbish Elastica; ‘Separated By Motorways’ surfs a giddy ska groove . All told: a proper sweetheart of a record.