Merchandise: Listen Up! (7″, Cityscape CITY-S-009)

Okay okay, this single is available on CD as well, but the CD doesn’t come on white vinyl, now does it? Regardless of the technical implications of pressing a CD on vinyl, you just don’t get 7″ diameter CDs. Merchandise are like Baby Bird’s cheerier brother, like the Badly Drawn Boy knock-off act it’s okay to like because they’re about fifty times better. They do accomplished, layered pop music with one foot in the ‘literate, dour Northerners’ camp and the other in the one that says ‘we’ve got beards, but we’re fun and approachable’.

Simon Minter