Now - Now Does The Trick

All-round A-grade human being Will Smith returns with a second Now record for what surely must be dream-come-true pairing with K Records. It may well be glazed with fuzz and reverb, but make no mistake, this is pop music in all its essentialist romantic glory. Smith is a wonderful melodicist and clearly blessed with the knowledge of the Lost Chord, coining numerous psychedelic ear worms that are one half bent out of shape, the other half bent right into it. Joined here by Hannah Forrester (who I didn't previously know) and Oli Lipton (who I know very well through his connections with Cindy and Violent Change), they make a sound that lands somewhere in the venn diagram that links Cleaners From Venus and Ariel Pink - they get the heartbreak bedroom jangle from the former, and the artful oddness from the latter, and end up filling a hole that few have been near since Ariel went loco and glampop panache in the American underground was displaced by something a bit moodier. Well, Now are anything but moody, buoyed by that eternally well intentioned idea that if a song might not change the world at large, it can at least create its own one. Now Does The Trick - don't it just. 
 
FFO: Cleaners From Venus, Ariel Pink, Part Time, Cuneiform Tabs, Sad Eyed Beatniks