Home Counties

When disenchantment runs high, when city life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be — when you’re forking out seven quid for a pint, shivering in a queue for a club night you don’t really care about, getting ripped off by landlords over blu tac stains, and squeezing in studio sessions around a relentless 9-5 schedule, there is only one logical response: fun.

That’s exactly what Home Counties provide on their debut album, Exactly As It Seems. A newly-purchased synthesiser, a fresh outlook, and a steady diet of early 2000s pop kicked open a world of melodic possibility for the band, resulting in an album that’s upbeat from start to finish: swapping wry social commentary for personal experience and big tunes.

Thematically, the album traverses the ups and downs of London life in your late twenties; laments on renting and how rubbish landlords are on the Gang of Four/Devo-indebted "You Break It, You Bought It”, turning 25 and not wanting to go clubbing anymore on the agitated indie-disco of “Uptight", and fear of social isolation in old-age on the shapeshifting art-rock of "Wild Guess”.

Home Counties always manage to balance the duality of lyrical frankness and musical buoyancy with gusto. With an eye for the day-to-day, all-too-relatable details of crap modern living, yet – coupled with an ear for hook-filled, grin-inducing melodies – the pay-off is one riddled in joy rather than despair.