Tear Talk - Port Sunlight (Bleeding Gold)

Although much of my life at the moment involves happily digesting the slabs of noisy guitar destruction as practised by the likes of Fat Janitor, Amstatten Bedroom Punk and Your Enemy, my ears are always open to the prospect of discovering the occasional band that can knock out a damn good tune with freshness and originality.

I was therefore delighted when the excellent Bleeding Gold label put me onto Tear Talk, a band in that rich tradition of Liverpudlian music that stretches from the Fab Four via The Teardrop Explodes and Wild Swans, through such far too easily overlooked eighties practitioners of the art like Care and Cook Da Books and more recently The Cranebuilders. It is the last of these with whom Tear Talk are most comparable. Beautifully crafted and unashamedly pop melodies sit atop a musical backdrop that switches from crowded to sparse and back again via the most gorgeous time switches and chord changes.

Their EP, Port Sunlight, contains many such gems. Its archetypal expression is found in the sugared adrenhalin rush found on 'Sleepwalking' but it's in the frantic 'Lost At Sea', which features in my February show on Dandelion Radio, and the bewitching, distorted 'Dry Blood' - which I'll play in March - that offer a glimpse of the full scope of the band's potential.

Bleeding Gold, as they've been doing so magnificently of late, have clearly identified this potential. I invite you to do the same.

Mark W