Album Review: Someone To Drive You Home

It seems like an age since The Long Blondes began staking their claim to become the indie world's current cause célèbre. So, after quitting their jobs as librarians, releasing four supreme singles and performing a raft of electrifying live shows, the Sheffield five-piece arrive with one of the most cocksure and bolshy debut albums imaginable.

Lust In The Movies opens with a crashing guitar shriek, while previous single, Once And Never Again - transformed from its comparatively meek original - thankfully retains its outstanding opening line ("you're only nineteen for God's sake / you don't need a boyfriend"). Elsewhere, the re-recorded Giddy Stratosphere has an assured strut that was absent from the already excellent original.

Kate Jackson's lusty vocals propel Only Lovers Left Alive and In The Company Of Women well beyond the inevitable Slits comparisons. Later, Heaven Help The New Girl is delicate and minimal, while You Can Have It Both Ways, with the dueling vocals, is the best song Pulp never recorded.

Someone To Drive You Home is stacked with tales of paranoia, mistreatment and self-harm ("you said you cut yourself doing the dishes"), but masked by such infectious and riotous indie pop that it's an irresistible proposition from a band with a dazzling future ahead of them.