SOME QUICK REVIEWS FROM THE MOUNTAIN OF PROMOS THAT WE JEALOUSLY GUARD. COME COLLECT ONE FROM THE SALIENT OFFICE IF ANYTHING TAKES YOUR FANCY.

Aberfeldy: Do Whatever Turns You On

CHEESY KEYS with no trace of irony. Crap call-and-response, boy/girl choruses. A song featuring the line “your poetry’s setting the city on fire”. A ginger with mumps and a rockabilly quiff. I have no coherent excuse, but they make music that makes me sing along compulsively. Do not, under any circumstances, listen to this

fucking album. They will invade your head, and then they will take over the world…

Grandaddy: Just Like The Fambly Cat

EVERYONE’S FAVOURITE ‘coulda-shoulda’ beens call it a day. It’s no Sophtware Slump, but hell, it’ll do. I wish more bands would decide to do it like this – y’know, sit round over a cuppa and Neil Young, pass round the tissues and reminisce about the good times then hug, promise to always be friends and then write a woozy little stunner of a break-up album. Pete? Carl? Guys?

Peeping Tom: Peeping Tom

NOT AS good as Mike Patton’s previous Lovage collaboration, but cut from the same sleazy cloth. Adjust the rating up by one if you hate almost everything he’s done since Faith No More, down by one if you were dumb enough to buy

his solo albums. Play loud and in your underwear.

Semifinalists: Semifinalists

HEY, MATE, do you wanna start a band? Yeah, sure. What are we going to do though? Well, I was thinking I’d pretty much play everything and you could sing and do some guitar or whatever, and we’ll ask that girl you fancy to sing as well, to give the whole thing an innocent frisson, and…oh, I dunno, we’ll write songs about holding hands, throw some ‘experimental’ Casiotone and like, a Hammond in, and it’ll be sweet. You in?