Oh, to have been a fly on the wall of Edwyn Collins’s Sutherland studio when he was producing parts of Glasgow quintet Spinning Coin’s debut album. Ebullience, youth, romance and the choicest chord shifts this side of Big Star: what’s not to like?
The pairing of Collins and a group Geographic overlord Stephen Pastel has warmly championed is unarguably an inspired one, its success borne out by how exquisitely unforced Permo sounds. With chunks of it also recorded at Glasgow’s hallowed Green Door studios, there’s no strain, no overreaching, no excess; instead you get guitars that never sound less than heavenly underpinning alternately cherubic and excitable vocals across 14 expertly executed and succinct pop songs that take freely from the past while moving resolutely forwards.
Hazy cuts such as Floating with You, Metronome River and Running with the World take top honours thanks to a common theme of tender melancholy and fragments where the chords change and your heart turns to jelly, but on the likes of Magdalene, Sides and Be Free Spinning Coin demonstrate that they are equally at home revealing their wilder side.
These are songs that, once heard, are unlikely ever to leave you.
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