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The second time around for a musical genre can be difficult. While post-punk's rehab at the hands of a new generation of New Yorkers is certainly no big surprise, who would have bet on the exhumation of shoegazing, the scene that the '90s loved to hate?
Whatever the odds, the naughties have spawned a new clutch of bands who appear to have grown up passively smoking in their older siblings' Lush, Slowdive and Ride records. Asobi Seksu add a sprinkle of the C86-inspired style of Strawberry Switchblade to that mix. To listen to Strawberries - the second single from their superb second album Citrus - is to immerse yourself in a rich distillation of everything that made Alan McGee's sadly-missed Creation Records the saviours of 90s guitar music.
If the original somehow - how? - fails to grab you, Strawberries comes with some excellent remixes; CSS strip the guitars away and push singer Yuki's vocal's to the front of a stark dance mix, while king of melancholic noisescapes Ulrich Schnauss manages to up the ante and create the kind of lithe spacerock that Doctor Who has on repeat on the TARDIS soundsystem. I can't quite rid myself of the feeling that this kind of music is about as relevant to the kids as dadrock bores Ocean Colour Scene's revamping of rock cliches was to my mob in the '90s, but if this is what middle age sounds like, bring it on. Lovely.
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