The Cage Was Unlocked All Along

Another offering from Chemikal Underground in combination with the Scottish Arts Council, Zoey Van Goey fill their oeuvre with jingle-jangle electric guitar, twinkling vibraphones, and generally melodic and tuneful girl/boy vocalising. This melange occasionally explodes into lush-layered pop (‘Sweethearts in Disguise’) to excellent effect. Lyrically their songs are aimed at vaguely politicised, over-literate, humanities-studying hipsters (“Do you remember how we met, paying off our student debt, we had no other plans, so we taught English in Japan?”, they sing on ‘Two White Ghosts’ ensuring they miss none of their key demographics). Such specificity, whilst charming, is of course a marketing disaster (in contrast, take the vague and woolly sentiments expressed by The Killers or the Kings of Leon: now there’s a couple of bands who’ve done focus groups!) Anyway, it’s nice stuff but with a narrow appeal.