- Perth band, er, perth, are not just a presumptuously ungoogleable band name, but an unusual combination of things. Echoing reverb smothers synthesisers and a variety of instruments, creating thickly layered sounds unified by a fairly left-field, twee-pop sensibility. It’s similar to a lot of things, but not really, definitively, the same as anything else and there’s not much music you can say that about these days.

To give you an idea of what I’m saying, if you go and search around the interwebs for what people have had to say about this album’s advance single, Drank And Kites And Tomorrow, its pleasantly hypnotic bopping gets compared to a different band by everyone who hears it: Neu!, Spiritualized, Caribou, Animal Collective, Fourtet. Ok, so there’s certain aural themes running through that collection of pleasantly, semi-electronic experimenters, but one of perth’s strengths is that they manage to combine elements of all of them in such a way that each has their own moment, rising to the front of the mix in an unexpected but not unpleasant manner. It’s as though you tossed every single one of their influences into a kaleidoscope.

Another band that perth are undoubtedly channeling is Apricot Rail, and they must be a strong source of the almost overwhelming sensation given off by the band, that everything’s gonna be OK. It just shimmers off their music in congenially psychedelic waves. perth shares three members with Apricot Rail and you can hear that happily good-natured feeling that they always brought to AR’s amiable brand of post-rock. At their best it set them apart from all the other epic and apocalyptic post-rocking types. Sometimes though it just meandered along until it became a bit dull.

perth, if only from the breadth of their influences, are never in danger of being dull. Space rock, psych, prog, post-rock, art-pop, ambient, kraut, synth-rock-pop, even dance (listen hard, you’ll hear some drum’n’bass in there), all of these are jostling for place, in the most gentlemanly and unthreatening manner imaginable, of course.

Like an e’d up bush doof, when perth ask What’s Your Utopia? they have a wide range of their own for you to choose from, and you may lose days exploring the options. When it’s all as inviting as this record is, why not?

- Chris Cobcroft.