Kelman - Is This How It Ends? / Postcards
[Liner]

If a band throws a stone into the indie pond and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a splash? The half a half a dozen reviews London three-piece Kelman attracted for their 2006 debut LP Loneliness Has Kept Us Alive were as glowing as they come, but the Chinese whispers that spread out thereafter faded away quicker than the BBC Live Earth coverage.

Wayne Gooderham and co have done a fine job of licking their scar tissue in the meantime, though, and their double A-side bid for Round Two gives off a punchy determination that could squeeze a grin into even the the Botox and steroids of Sly Stallone's jaw. 'We just make things worse', whispers Gooderham on Is This How It Ends?, while energy-saving guitars jar to a muffled pound on a wall of synth. He might want to look that one up, as if anything, the single is an indicator of a developing richness in his songwriting, and fleshes out the sinew of earlier Kelman output into a grittier, more accomplished dimension.

The band's trump card of fusing stark, breathy memoirs with hangdog riffs and tin soldier glockenspiels is still spooky enough to make Derek Acorah's Brylcreem stand on end, and lyrics such as 'Sweating, shaking, stretched out in this room/Ambition is my space to move' draw frankly on the paranoid squalor of post-ejaculation heartache with enough brevity to get Darren Hayman and Aidan Moffatt buying the drinks.

Reserve offering Postcards, with its repeated line of 'I Love You', could potentially illicit comparisons with the theme from Simon Pegg's long-lost sitcom Hippies, but Gooderham's genteel prowess keeps his outfit decidedly outside the squared paper of twee standard form. Both pieces have a grimy sixties wooze to them nonetheless, and Postcards in particular lets Hammond organs churn like Paul McGann in the Withnail & I titles. If this is a sign of a change up in gear for the new album, then things are certainly looking good, and Kelman's outlook on the solitude between trysts continues to feel as cool and original as blue Doritos.

Tracklisiting:

1. Is This How It Ends?
2. Postcards