GoodBooks remind me of the bloke who sits on the sofa and makes no effort at a house party – but if you accidentally engage him in conversation, his sardonic wit and wisdom will keep you there all night. In musical terms, he’d also be best mates with Mystery Jets and Guillemots, and wear corduroy.
GoodBooks are a Kent foursome, who in real life are best pals with the Magic Numbers. Control, their debut album, is indeed self-confident – as it should be, coming from a group who’ve previously released three singles that made the hip’n’happening pee with excitement in their skinny jeans.
Thanks to the wizardry of Dan Grech-Marguerat, the production goes out of its way to give the songs room to be themselves, rather than squeezing them uncomfortably into radio-shaped moulds. As such, there’s a consistent atmosphere throughout its 50 minutes, whether the band are proffering Rapture-style disco (on the first song ever written as GoodBooks, ‘Walk With Me’), or summery electronic-indie (as in the latest single, the anti-war ‘Passchendale’).
But zoom in, and you’ll find that the album’s punctuation is in the ear-grabbing ideas rather than in the songs per se – check out the end of ‘Good Life Salesman’ or the guitar lick on ‘The Last Day’.
Where the charts are concerned GoodBooks will no doubt be outshone by the party tricks of the Kaiser Chiefs or the antics of Babyshambles, but they've got depth, intelligence and shopping trolleys full of tunes. Watch out – it’s always the quiet ones.