T-Shirt Weather are a pop/punk trio from Durham, making their mark with this first long-player.
‘Devin O’Leary’ is a boisterous opening track spiced up with thrown-in violin, sounding like a powerful hybrid of Arctic Monkeys and something off an early Roxy Music album. ‘Gum’ keeps the momentum going, plenty of brass, a sublime middle eight and a sharp play-out. There is a singalong chorus on ‘The Undersigned’ to splice together some deft instrumentation including a bit of keyboard in there.
I thought that ‘My Dad’s Black Polo’ referred to cool parental 1960s Gallic upper-body wear but it is the car that the singer reminiscences about wistfully. Don’t worry, its not a slow lament and neither is the next song ‘Sometimes’, a punchy tale of not quite coping, with some choice lyrics (“I wear my face to keep my brain in place…”) .
The widescreen sweeping sound of ‘Spaghetti Western (school reunion version)’ is a heartfelt ballad, different in tone and pace from the rest of the album (“it’s not the films I miss, it’s someone to watch them with…”) The last tracks are two more frenetic energy bursts; taken together they sound like a mini-musical with contrasting sections crammed into very short running times.
Noisy, intense, edgy…a great debut!
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