Kick

Post-Christmas torpor was setting in big time - and then it snowed...! High excitement ensued - and here is Tom, in his shorts, playing football in it. Night-time, snow, running about, limited skill - the camera couldn't handle it at all but managed to come up with some pleasingly abstract results nonetheless. Plus, funnily enough, even though I was going to have another day off, chart-wise, this picture goes perfectly with my next choice - Christmas magic, who'd've thought...:

#7. ‘Kick to Kick’ by the Steinbecks

 There’s a bit in the title song of this album where Joel Meadows, perusing the record collection of his dead cousin at a gathering for the funeral, sings “hey, you liked Lou Barlow – how come I didn’t know…?” A plaintive little couplet, it’s probably the most ‘indie’ expression of grief ever – a wistful reflection that they’ll now never have the chance to bond over a shared love of the former bass player in Dinosaur Jr. and general alternative American whinger. There’s another bit on the album where the opening lines of the song go “We cannot hope to compete with such colours, in the garden of earthly delights we reside”, and Joel manages to deliver them so beautifully in his clipped, conversational antipodean lilt that they don’t sound even remotely bookish. It’s the little things, just saying. The Steinbecks, unlike the Popguns, haven’t been away – apparently they just beaver away over there in Australia at their own sweet pace, buffing everything up nicely. The seven years since the last album shows in the polish and the quality of the songs, the band’s history (Joel and his brother were previously the Sarah records recording artists the Sugargliders – check out last year’s brilliant ‘Nest With a View 1990-1994’ compilation) shows in the slightly ramshackle warmth and wistful hints of nostalgia and the whole package is glazed with an irresistible summery indie power-pop shine reminiscent of some of those early nineties guitar bands with an ear for a hook, like the Lemonheads or even Teenage Fanclub. See you again in a few years, boys!

...to Kick