new music, er, tuesdays: the tailors;

Apparently, we’re not supposed to say nice things about our friends’ musical projects anymore, even if we mean them. Or so Jim at Aye Tunes discovered at the weekend there, on some receipt of some interestingly-spelled hate mail. This isn’t good news for a blog which actually has its own tag labeled “shameless nepotism”, but it’s not as if I have time to write about things I don’t care about anyway – no matter how nice you are to me.

This is good news for Adam, with whom I regularly exchange a bit of banter with on Twitter and who sent me over a copy of his label – the London-based Trash Aesthetics‘ – latest release: Come Dig Me Up by The Tailors. It’s a pleasant little alternative country style number, therefore right up this blog’s street. The problem? Adam is also the lead singer.

But I’m going to review it anyway.

The album – I keep wanting to call it “Come Pick Me Up” for obvious reasons – opens with “Pictures of Her”. It’s thirty seconds of pretty little one-man-and-his-guitar winsomeness and heartbreak before bursting into flame (quite literally, if you listen to the lyrics) and an epic choral lament of lost love and teenage petulance. In a way, it’s the perfect starting point for an album which according to the press release came about when the band’s original second album was lost forever on a corrupt hard drive.

From then on, the album doesn’t let up. It’s nine tracks of just lovely, summery power-pop goodness in the Big Star vein. It’s a big-hearted record you just want to hug, bursting with optimism and good humour. Tracks like “Bow Road”, “Animal Humour” and “Forever Fade” are the sort of bright, catchy, breezy songs every mixtape needs, while “Mush Love” has a fantastic seventies drivetime radio feel.

So you know when you listen to the saddest of sad songs, and you pore over the lyrics and start to make up the story behind it? Come Dig Me Up‘s title track isn’t some extended metaphor: the reason those arms are too small to hold and that skin is too cold to touch is… it’s actually about a dinosaur. But you could take it the other way if you’d rather. Keeping on the reptilian theme, “Crocodiles” is the prettiest song on the album – and “Impossible Wonder” is lovely too; understated, Killip’s voice cracking with just the right note of warmth.

There you go. Love, fire and reptiles. It doesn’t get any better, regardless of who your friends are.

DOWNLOAD: Animal Humour
LISTEN: to The Tailors at Myspace
BUY: Come Dig Me Up at Trash Aesthetics