The Underground of Happiness

What a lovely album this is, from Londoner Thom Driver with friends, lying somewhere between the wry social observations of Darren Hayman and the outsider introspections of Syd Barrett. So, very English you might think except that lyrically these songs are painfully direct, in a fairly unEnglish way. Draw me things you’d love to see and I can fill the colours in then we’ll smudge the lines and feel them running up and down our spines from ‘Please don’t go backwards’ or this from ‘Fingers from the future’ – I saw your hand-me-down in the fireplace after mother left for town are you strangled by your emotions do you wish you had the key. The latter proceeds luminously at funeral pace and with its skeleton guitar lines brings to mind a little bit that poignant Go Betweens classic ‘Cold and dusty in here’. I’ve already played ‘Mining’ on the show, an inspired mixture of ska, calypso trumpet and cartoon soundtracks, which bemoans the psychological hazards of (we...