I feel uplifted. I feel the urge to drink beer and misbehave. I’ve been listening to Chris Devotion and The Expectations’ new album “Amalgamation and Capital”. Whilst it is unashamedly derivative, it nonetheless sparkles with all the brightness of a star in the ascendance.
From “A Modest Refusal”, the post punk foot stomper that ignites this album, Chris Devotion struts his lyrical stuff like some caffeine fuelled attendee of the Pete Shelley and the Difford and Tilbrook schools of song writing excellence. Even eighties trash pop gets skilfully reinvented in “Tell The Girl” and you simply won’t find a better excuse to turn it up and bop across the room.
There is more, much more, to enjoy as a thousand dull indie rockers get sent home with their tail between their legs by “A Pinhole Suit” before the essence of punk discontent starts a secondary fire with “You’ve Got It All”. Taking only a sub one minute break – “Eyes Open Now” - for some mellow reflection, a journey across the Atlantic follows to rob Weezer and Green Day of “The Girl Is Leaving”. It’s a remarkable thing the way the songs on this album can sound like they have come from other, better known, bands and yet still sound like they all came from the same pen.
The sole cover on this album is a gloriously camp punk version of Woody Guthrie’s “I Ain’t Got No Home”. What else would it be, after all?
“Amalgamation and Capital” is the kind of album that cannot fail but to raise your spirits and, as such, should be made available on prescription.