THE VERLAINES: “Way Out Where” (Slash)

VERLAINES lynchpin, Graeme Downes, sounds like a bit of a smarty pants. He’s got a slew of honours degrees to his name, including a PhD on the music of Gustav Mahler, and his lyrics, though refreshingly literate, are often too studied and wordy for their own good.

However, while his feet may be shod with clever clogs, his heart and ears are still faultlessly placed. Downes is a canny songwriter who not only knows one end of a pop melody from the other, but also precisely where to hammer in the spikes. And in these depressed times, there is a desperate need for this kind of skilled labour.

If Crowded House are New Zealand’s Beatles then The Verlaines are its Stones (sort of). There’s a grit and pout and rasp to their material that raises it above the level of routine guitar-rock fare.

Having recorded three albums under strictly-controlled garage-land conditions, the band are softening their edges a little for the mainstream but, as befits a troupe whose very moniker sounds like a manifesto, they are as adept at the disruptive whine of guitar-play as they are at the harsh beauty of the three chord trick.

The songs are gems. ‘Mission Of Love’, ‘This Valentine’ and ‘Cathedrals Under The Sea’, for instance, are undeniable classics, painstakingly crafted and at once both glacial and fiery. Some tracks remind me of That Petrol Emotion, others of Elvis and The Attractions but alongside the not unsurprising Television influence, there’s a folk and, yes, even classical undertow to certain tracks that enhances their atmosphere of other-worldliness, and their sheer pop appeal.

Way Out Where is fashioned from familiar ingredients but it’s got a swagger and strut all of its own. There’s life left in the old dog yet.

Roll over Uncle Tom and tell Mr. Mahler the news.

• Liam Fay