Just when you were thinking that Brian Wilson at Glastonbury was going to provide the perfect soundtrack to a perfect summer, just when you were thinking that all the jangle and spangle and the shimmer and glide was lost from the heady world of pop music. Just when you were about to give up hope completely, here are Kicker, and they’re ready to put all that right.

Railing against aloof coolness, insincerity and resolute cynicism, Kicker embrace aspects of eighties pop, northern soul and the underground in equal measure, and with it they produce thrilling, inspiring and breathtaking three minute slices of real life. This record tells the stories of inner city living (and we’re not talking the apartment and wine bar brigade here) with an element of melancholia which is tempered with an irrefutable notion of unassailable optimism, it not only tells the story of a broken heart, it tells you the other story of that heart mended, that is what sets it aside form it’s peers.

Our Wild Mercury Years was recorded in London between 2002 and 2004 and features ex-members of Velocette, Hood and Comet Gain. ‘Indie Supergroup’ you say?, well, of sorts, yes, but what is evident here is that the results of these people coming together by far outweigh the sum of its equal parts.

The record in itself is a heady, pulsating sub-soul, pseudo-pop, living and breathing document of the day to day life. Semi-menacing, brooding, uncomfortable lyrics are coated with a saccharine sweet, smooth veneer of swooning and swaying soundtracks which evoke a definite feeling of summer, of beer gardens and barbeques, of picnics and of parks, of sunburn and of sunglasses. It compels images of lazy, long, drifting sunny afternoons whilst the lyrics tell an altogether darker tale. Still, it’s utterly infectious and totally irresistible. The brass inserts on Blue are worth the admission place alone, whilst the throbbing, subversive Hammond on ghosts make it a song that you simply cannot ignore, with it’s searing, soaring chorus throwing the most heart wrenching lyrics of the year so far in your face; and just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, the male/female vocal duelling on Local Gentry puts all the great duets, George and Tammy, Tina and Ike, George and Elton and Take That and Lulu not just into the shade, but it walks all over them and then pisses on their chips. It’s that good.

Right from the start of this record, the songs are awash with chime, with melody, and with harmony. Quite simple arrangements are layered beautifully and unobtrusively to provide a big pop sound that leaves you unable to resist one last turn around the dance floor, picture the Wigan Casino in 1976, on a Friday night, at about three in the morning – yeah I know, you’re probably all too young to understand what I’m getting at, but trust me, this is the real thing. Tinged with a hint of country, laced with a certain melancholia and pinned down by a healthy dose of optimistic, heartbreaking arrangements Our Wild Mercury Years becomes one of the most perfectly flawed, beautiful records of the year so far. It’s worth a listen, it’s worth a chance, it’s worth the 43 minutes you’d have to invest in having a listen, it’s worth so much more than all of that. The only problem being, once you have spent those first 43 minutes with this record it’s unlikely you’ll be hearing anything else for quite a while.

Words by Johnny Mac
 

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