The Magic Numbers

Herald rating: * * * *

Quite how the Magic Numbers got past the Britpop image police on their way to next-big-thingdom is something of a miracle.

They probably weigh as much as the Kaiser Chiefs and Bloc Party combined. And by the sounds of it, they don't have an album by the Cure, Gang of Four, Joy Division or some other other requisite 2005 retro-influence between them.

However, the quartet do know how harmonise, write deceptively simple songs and deliver them in a fabulously vibrant way.

Yes, so sunny do the Magic Numbers initially sound that it feels like you've stumbled into the same musical glee club founded by the Polyphonic Spree. But once the songs of the brilliantly named frontman Romeo Stodart start to sink in it's apparent that many a tale of heartbreak and woe lies beneath these sunstruck melodies.

Curiously, he's put his more extravagant rock-fired numbers up first, which can make the second half of this debut drag a little, although the latter tracks include some very lovely songs, whether it's the Nick Drakesque folk of This Love, the Motown soul-shaped Love's a Game and Try, or Hymn for Her - an extravagant pop opus that was an early single but is a final hidden track here.

Up front Mornings Eleven gets this off to a twitchy start of 60s pop harmonies and outbreaks of doo-wop, Forever Lost fires up some country-rock rpms, and Both The Mule and I See You You See Me's swooning tunes might have some digging out those late 80s Prefab Sprout albums.

Sometimes, when it's pleading Don't Give Up The Fight and Which Way to Happy, that twee-o-meter does wind up in the red. But even that doesn't stop this sounding like one infectious feelgood pop album. A giddy pleasure all round.

Label: Heavenly EMI