The Moles – Tonight’s Music (Fire Records)
A brilliant restatement of alternative rock values from Richard Davies and friends, the first new music in too many years following 2014’s superb retrospective compilation Flashbacks and dream sequences . It’s a sprawling 24 track opus full of fuzzy or jangly guitars, searching lyrics with a cut up sensibility and a restless garage band spirit. The tone is refreshingly antsy with a core of the band’s 80s Flying Nun jangly/droney roots (‘Beauty Queen of Watts’, ‘Artificial heart’, ‘Needle and thread’, ‘Slings and arrows’) with some 90s US GBV-ish offshoots (‘You’re in my band’, ‘Highbury & Islington’) and Flaming Lips style weirdness (‘Strange summer’). Interspersed among the killer tunes are doodles, jam room excerpts and interludes which resemble beat poetry fed through a punk or lo fi filter. ‘Highbury & Islington’ in particular seems to be an attempt to find the Shakespearean subplot in a tube journey among rival Spurs and Arsenal fans (Montagues and Capulets)....