SINGLE OF THE WEEK
Lowgold may not seem an attractive or glamorous proposition. After all, there’s too much lank hair, checked shirts and leaning against trees to contend with. But their downbeat and frequently wonderful form of bewildered melancholia has beauty and grace in spades. ‘Mercury’ is faintly reminiscent of early REM before they disappeared up their own celebrity. It’s not anthemic enough to stir up Coldplay-style chart action, but its fuzzy fragility and slightly shoegazey glow shows that not all tender guitar pop has to state the Everyman obvious. Nonetheless, like ‘Yellow’, this is the kind of maddeningly addictive gem you’ll keep on repeat play for hours. A gentle and insistently magnificent bout of ragged brilliance. 9/10
Neil Davenport