Song(s) of the Day # 1,666 The Plastic Shoelaces

We truly live in a strange time and place in 2018. One in which you can come across something like this, ostensibly a record by a bunch of middle-aged blokes from Sacramento, California that is in every real respect, actually a time machine back to Camden Town in 1986.

The Plastic Shoelaces sing in English accents, they do that C-86 thing to an absolute tee. They clearly revere The Television Personalities, Wreckless Eric, Patrick Fitzgerald, Buzzcocks and know intimately every record The Razorcuts and 14 Iced Bears ever released.

I'm not quite sure what to make of all of this, except... except that every single song is better than the last. Right the way through. Within the parameters it sets up for itself from the first, it's a genius pop record. Occasionally their accents slip and they're revealed as the Austin Powers of Indiepop. Anglo-wannabees. But for the most part they sing and play purposely out of tune in a truly inspirational manner and they take the years off anyone who remembers this stuff from first time round. Like me!

The Plastic Shoelaces. There they are. Somewhere in Sacramento, California in their trainers and scuffed jeans, eating sweets and drinking lemonade from bottles with a straw, living in a world where we're all forever seventeen wishing we were fourteen. They take me back to a time and place where I actually was. Or at least thereabouts. With our collection of fanzines and seven inch records. Where Jonathan Richman and Edwyn Collins are the role models and Bobby Gillespie is sure to be the star one day that he so obviously is already in his head right now. 

'We were teenagers. Reading The Maker...' , they sing. By which they mean the Melody Maker, the long defunct weekly music paper for those who spurned The NME. I used to live here and that world is forever preserved in aspic on this record. And I for one am very glad that it is and grateful to The Plastic Shoelaces for doing it all so impeccably and with such incredible eye for detail. They got it on tape! Appropriately this is how the album is available. That and streaming.