The New Mendicants - Into The Lime

If you were told that Norman Blake and Joe Pernice were going to form a band, you’d probably imagine the sound of The New Mendicants. The Teenage Fanclub stalwart and Pernice Brother (alongside drummer Mike Belitsky) have their roots buried so deeply in tuneful guitar-pop that for them to do anything else would be akin to a Premier League footballer picking himself up off the deck, turning to the referee and insisting that his momentum carried him into the defender’s outstretched leg and it’s not a penalty.

Originally written for the soundtrack to the film version of Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down, but rejected by the film-makers, these nine originals (along with a stellar cover of Sandy Denny’s ‘By The Time It Gets Dark’) are pretty much guaranteed to have even the staunchest chin-stroker tapping a body-part in appreciation. The melodies are instantly hummable, from the pristine power-pop of ‘Shouting Match’ to the delicious harmonies of ‘Sarasota’, the magnificently melancholy ‘High On The Skyline’ or shiny, happy festive tune, ‘A Very Sorry Christmas’.

They won’t win any awards for originality, but if you’re going to steal, you should nick from the best and ‘Cruel Annette’ combines Beach Boysesque harmonies with a melody borrowed from the Everlys and a wicked sense of humour straight from the Ray Davies songbook. ‘If You Only Knew Her’ and ‘Follow You Down’ are achingly beautiful, nodding their hangdog head towards Big Star’s back catalogue, while ‘Out Of The Lime’ practically bleeds bittersweet Byrdsian magic dust from every chord. Only the closing ‘Lifelike Hair’ deviates from the blueprint, coming across like a fistfight at the OK Corral between Pavement and The Animals. That aside, this is infectious guitar tunesmithery that jingles and jangles in all the right places.