Berwick-upon-Tweed is an unlikely place for a rock'n'roll revolution. Technically the final English outpost on the very verge of the Scottish border in Northumbria, it boasts a football team who - confusingly - compete in the Scottish league and...well, not that much else really.
Except recently, local boys in waiting Eastern Lane started to turn heads within the music industry and now we also have WON MISSISSIPPI who hail from the same remote outpost and also make a bloody agreeable guitar-based noise.
WM graciously namecheck Eastern Lane on the sleeve of their first album, the curiously-titled "...Welcomes Careful Drivers". Intriguingly, road safety seems of paramount importance to this youthful quartet as the sleeve notes also suggest: "we drove 180 miles to make this - driving very carefully!" Well said. We could do with some responsible young role models, eh?
Besides, WM attack their seething, articulate punk-pop with a similar dedicated zeal and, accordingly, "...Welcomes Careful Drivers" wins through with their natural wit and naive charm very much to the fore. Theirs isn't a revolutionary sound: it's a typical four-piece guitar, bass, drums and vox set-up and at times it pays homage to ye olde Nirvana-style soft/loud dynamics, while - on tunes like the more ambitious things here ("Answers In The Form Of A Question", "Put Your Life In My Hands") - they sometimes come off a little too loose and exuberant.
Nevertheless, "...Welcomes Careful Drivers" has plenty going for it and overall is a debut album to be rightly proud of. Lyrically, frontman Martin McCleary is above average and his observations help to ensure these songs of innocence lost and experience gained ring true and intriguing more often than not. The choppy, staccato riffing of the opening "Freehand Circles" is a cool start, while the confessions of a young swimming instructor tale "Teaching Girls To Dive" ("August she left home in pieces, her hair scent on my pillow was the soundtrack to my summer") is full of resonant images. Besides, who could argue with a chorus that goes "1982, someone torched the jetty" like it was the catchiest thing in the world?
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There's more good stuff, too. Both "Aniseed Tang" - with its' "ba ba ba"s and seaside organ whirl - and the equally pithy "On Your Feet" are nice snapshots of love's first flush, while "Avoid Cameras" works hard to avoid obvious pigeonholing, ranging from slow and reflective to fast and gravel-crunching and then into regretful waltz time. Wow - certainly didn't see that one coming.
It's not all an unfettered success. Aside from the occasionally amateur playing and sound quality, on songs like the nervy punkathon "Union Rules", WM could be any one of a number of identikit wannabes you'd struggle to pick out of a line-up of Hundred Reasons, Husker Du or China Drum copyists and the closing "Tape" is just clueless and should have been left on the control room floor.
Still, for all its' flaws, "...Welcomes Careful Drivers" is a promising start from an interesting quartet who seem impatient to chip away at punk-pop's limitations. If they can build on this, those L-plates will soon be a thing of the past.
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