Ah, the great smell of Brut! Most bands don't make you think about aftershave but Chris Devotion & The Expectations do and I don't mean wearing it either. No, I mean drinking it. No beer left, no vodka left and even the Advocaat has left the bottle. What, pray tell, is a man to do in such circumstances? Track down the cheap aftershave for that all important last drink of the evening, that's what. Only Chris Devotion & The Expectations have got there first.
In these days of pretension and maximum volume as a substitute for being unable to count beyond four, it is nothing short of a revelation to encounter some sledgehammer post punk theatre like "A Modest Refusal". You get a bit of twang on the guitar, you get a bit of Nick Cave on the powdered accelerant style vocals and you get – most of all, shboom… - a proper steamroller song that cries out to be crowned as an anthem for the common man.
You would think that would be enough for one band but on the other side – God I wish these songs were on vinyl – is yet another, even better, over the top, Spector does Transvision Vamp parody of all things pop from the sixties to the eighties. "Tell The Girl" is what every great pop song should be and that is an epic condensed into less than three minutes.
"Let there be light", said the bomb. I'd happily surf into the atmosphere playing these two songs.