Song(s) of the Day # 2,749 The Umbrellas

 

There are few more self-referential scenes in music history than the Indie one of the Eighties that led to C-86, Primal Scream, Tallulah Gosh, The Razorcuts, Sarah Records and all that stuff.. A song was written about it, On Tape by The Pooh Sticks which eulogised the joys of wearing the right t-shirts and frocks, sporting the right bowl hair cut, buying the right singles and forming a fey Rock & Roll band with alternating male and female vocals, all sung willfully out of tune to a backdrop of jangling guitars and shoddily bashed tambourines.

It seems the appeal of this sensibility has not died more than thirty years on. San Francisco's The Umbrellas are here to take their turn at this particular well-worn page of the Rock & Roll Colouring Book. They're certainly word perfect, not bothering to restrict themselves within borders and boundaries as you'd expect. They gleefully splash the their canvas with dayglo crayon abandon on their eponymous debut album, just out on Slumberland Records, pretty much the home of this kind of modern indie ennui.

It's all slightly odd at this remove. In one way The Umbrellas are carefree, not bothering to hit the right notes, in fact deliberately fudging them, but in others they are frankly Stalinist, in sticking to the rules of their given form with exhaustive zeal.The record is  pretty much a free pass to being 18 forever. Not the worst invitation ever.

I was wondering whether I had the staying power, three or four songs in, but by the end of its twelve track run I'd be won over by the evident enthusiasm and frankly astonishing attention to detail. If you don't care for The Pastels, you're almost certainly not going to care for this. If you do, this could be right up your street. 

This isn't by any means the only paean to this sensibility I've heard this year. The Reds, Pinks & Purples and The Telephone Numbers have already put out good records adhering with similar discipline to this approach. The Umbrellas opens up the fizzy pop for one last indie picnic before autumn closes in.