Pants Yell! - Betsey Trotwood, London

If I were younger I’d be wearing my fringe like Roger McGuinn. I’d be earnestly nodding with pretend knowing at a band’s good sense in decorating T-Shirts with maverick individuals like Dan Treacy and Edwyn Collins. I’d be scratching PantsYell! on my arm with a fountain pen and drawing hearts around my headaches.

But feelings transcend the ages. The emotions escape gravity’s pull and exist outside of history. And thank goodness for that. Thank goodness too for Pants Yell!, the group who more than most remind me of this fact.

Now I’ve eagerly consumed this Boston/Brooklyn trio’s recorded output over the past couple of years and I’m pleased to report that as a live experience they back up the brilliance of their recorded goods with rare aplomb. There’s a sharper edge to their live performance, which is exactly as it should be of course, and I hear echoes of the likes of The Aislers Set (and their forebears Henry’s Dress), Fairways, Poundsign and a host of other great lost US Pop groups. Most of all though it really marks out a lineage that links neatly into the sound of early Go-Betweens, circa Send Me A Lullaby and the Able Label and Postcard singles that bristled with such spiky melodic charms. This is an oft-overlooked period for the Go-Betweens, but it is one that has always filled me with delight. Maybe this is down to my infatuation with the aesthetic of the loose, rough sketch; of my love for dramatically imperfect creations where the lines show through and the mark of the process is indelibly left on the artefact. Well, whatever, Pants Yell! are hewn of the same stone, are the result of explorations through independent Pop’s shambolic history, of stumbling excitedly through the doors of, if not perception then at least of strange darkened rooms lit by bare bulbs that illuminate the rarest and barest of treasures. Pants Yell! are dripping in the residual fall out from the histories of alternative Rock and independent Pop soaked up from the ether. This isn’t to say that they are some fey retro schtick though. No, oh no. For Pants Yell! sound utterly Now. Pants Yell! celebrate the moment like few others can, make a contemporary Pop that sparkles in all the right places and hell, let’s be honest with ourselves here: I’m only mentioning those old reference points because I’m some old git with too many memories. So sue me.

The bottom line is that Pants Yell! are a rare, marvellously informed Pop treasure that shines in all the right places and casts shadows the shapes of dreams. Catch them whilst the gold still glistens.