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How you are going to feel about this album will depend, partly, on whether you consider the term 'twee' to be an insult or (button) badge of honour when deployed in a musical sense. Whilst there is certainly no denying that The Research meet many of the criteria of modern-day indiepop, there is much else going on here on their second album that is enjoyable and worth exploring.
The best thing that this band have going for them is their way with a contagiously catchy tune. This shines through most notably on the uptempo numbers, which are generally the album highlights. Single, I Think She’s The One I Love is a case in point, all singalong cuteness, lovely swoony girl band backing and lush production. Also tunefully lovely are Rockin’ The Boat With My Friends and I Think I Know What Happens When You Die, on which the female backing vocal made me think of Kirsty McColl.
The lead vocal can sometimes sound a little irritating, in that faux-childlike mannered way that this band have in common with Los Campesinos!, particularly on Lost Souls In The Vapours, and the lyrical content occasionally (but only occasionally) also strays into aren’t-we-cute-wacky-kiddies territory, with lines like "I left on my skateboard / Looking for a meaning" (Librarian Girl) and We can do whatever, any time" (Anytime, Babe).
Another key lyrical motif is that of religious / Christian references: from mention of Sunday Schools on Golden Rules, to exhorting "Gotta love your neighbours" on Lost Souls In The Vapours, to the most overtly religious track Rockin’ The Boat With My Friends with its examination of redemption, faith and friendship.
Several tracks also do the whole self-referential thing where artists namecheck other artists (in this case Piney Gir and the Schla La Las in Golden Rules) and the music and record-making process ("Blame it on the record label", they sing, on Lost Souls In The Vapours, presumably a reference to the difficult time the band went through between the release of their first album, on EMI offshoot At Large Recordings and their current signing to This Is Fake D.I.Y.).
Otherwise the band are enjoyably oblique in meaning, with many songs giving a more impressionistic and fragmented sense of what they are "about", allowing the listener to fill in the gaps themselves (see She Is Cold As Death, Cold As Death, Cold As Death, Treasure Every Measure, Librarian Girl, I Think I Know What Happens When You Die and I Would Like To Be Forgiven).
This lyrical obliqueness, and occasional darkness (is She Is Cold As Death, Cold As Death, Cold As Death about a modern version of Dickens' Miss Haversham?) that prevents it all becoming too sickly-sweet. What also helps is the judicious and sparing use of a really quite heavy-rock guitar sound, to offset the lightness of the strings, piano, synths, brass etc. Librarian Girl and Rockin’ The Boat With My Friends both benefit from this as does the overall feel and flow of the album.
So: twee indiepop, then? Perhaps, but anyone with a fondness for good, sometimes great tunes, a bit of shade with their light, and literate songs that are going to make them think a bit would do well to look beyond the obvious, and succumb to the pleasures to be found here.
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