Someone broke into my car last night, so I awoke this morning to a letter from the police and a whole stack of glass all over my seats. Apparently some cretinous punter from the club round the corner smashed the window and tried to use the glass as a weapon to fight the police. But I digress – the net effect was to put me in a REALLY BAD MOOD, which makes me all the more intolerant towards crap demos. Fortunately for me, what should drop into the pile but the Collected Recordings 2003-4 from Sennen, in a pleasingly-minimal dark blue sleeve. Sennen mash up a pleasingly-wide range of influences, simultaneously pushing themselves further than most bands of their ilk manage to while not running away shrieking like girls from the idea of writing a ‘proper’ song. ‘Just Wanted to Know’, for instance, hooks itself around a two-line refrain delivered with more than a shade of Jason Spaceman’s laconic drawl, before lifting off into the kind of euphoric, mid-paced noise that Six By Seven made their own on their first record. An elegance a bit like wot Martin Carr’s best pop songs has done got marks out’I Knew a Girl’, a disarmingly effective Pop Hit that doesn’t outstay its welcome despite clocking in at two-and-a-half chart pop hits in length. In fact, most of the songs easily top five minutes, but they build well and offer no small reward for hearing them out.

On the down side, there’s a tendency for too many songs to amble along at the same pace, which given the length of the tracks does lend the disc as a whole a slightly lumbering feel in places. But there’s real composure and quality here as a whole, and what’s more, they’ve cheered me up. Nice one.

More info: Sennen

Posted: 10|5|04 at 7:54 pm. Filed under: record reviews.
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