The Speedreader star is rising above the English Midlands. They are hard to pigeon-hole as their songs blast through genres, mixing and matching styles, sometimes within the same tune. Their self-produced EP, 'In a Way We're All Winners', has been out a couple of months and it is well worth several listens.

Note to Self is the self-deprecating paean to a love slipping away. He's in love, she's looking at him with 'cool eyes'. All his friends are trying to give him advice on how to keep her, while he alternates between pleading, 'if fortune favours the brave, tell me how to behave', and trying to accept the inevitable, shrugging it off to save his pride. He's not fooling anybody. It's rockier than your average indie-pop, darker too.

Small Print strikes from left field. The airier, lighter musical tone is at odds with the paranoid anxiety of the lyrics, which just serves to underscore them perfectly. Until, mid-way through, the darkness penetrates the music too, roaring in on guitars as Adam Byrne screams out, 'Bring it on, rain down the blows on me.' The lightness later returns, but never quite takes hold again. We are living in a world where the conspiracy theories are the horrific reality.

Get Well Soon uses electric guitar to scythe through the disquiet left by Small Print. In more ways than one, it is the antidote to the previous song. Instead of hiding in panic, Mike Beardsworth urges us to fight the good fight, because we're none of us quitters. That guitar rages as a weapon or standard at intervals, while more voices join the chorus. It reaches the level of becoming almost a spiritual choir, 'it takes sometimes, but look what's given ya...', before returning to the warrior rallying call, the drums beating out a military tattoo. Perhaps this is what Agincourt would have sounded like if someone had given Henry V a guitar and amp.

Follow Me Down swings us around again. We've been through indie, rock, pop, a flirtation with choral, and now Beardsworth is in love again. But it's a transitory thing. He goes from 'I'm so happy' to 'don't trust the sunshine', which is a bit of a shame, because the sunlight dances between the heavier rock like a psychedelic throw-back to the Summer of Love. Perhaps it is.

Nowhere is the Radiohead influence more apparent than in the six-minute epic journey of Wait on Amber. Piano and guitar interweave, spiralling the song into ever greater heights. Byrne bares his soul, open raw, appealing for understanding, but not trusting his audience to get it. Plummeting into the comfortably numb stage, 'hopeless like a reptile trying to feel emotion', he fears for his sanity if he can't enclose his feelings in amber until it's safe to come out again.

There isn't a duff note on this EP; it seems remarkable that they aren't better known.  

Matilda Mother

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