The Celebrity Squares
Happy? (Dumka)

In all honesty there are more contemporary Penny Farthings, but as a great many respectable people (plus Kelly Jones) will attest, the art of good songwriting will never die. And so long as bands of The Celebrity Squares’ ilk have breath in them, there isn’t much danger of that.

With roots in ’90s pop-rockers Honeycrack (billed at the time as a side project of The Wildhearts) we’re unsurprisingly wedged in tuneful British indie country – not a bad place to be if your teeth can stand the saccharine rush.

And while the title track is an exercise in vaguely self-serving cleverness, Willie Dowling’s talent shines through on ‘What You’ve Done To Yourself’, wherein Queen, The Beach Boys and Silver Sun are mangled into a concoction easier to swallow than liquid chocolate. The ‘happy’ reference may be sarcastic, but for devotees this will brighten a tiny corner of summer.