People Skills - Repeat Performance 377

My first instinct when scanning the tracklisting of this covers tape from shop favourites People Skills was that we were being trolled - it opens with Semi-Charmed Life and closes with Linger. This is dismal London 2022, not an Alpha Epsilon irony party... And yet and yet, i must park my skepticism at the door, because it's clear from a few tracks in this is a wholly worthwhile and possibly sincere(-ish) affair, the kind of slo-mo, lo-fi pop deconstructivism Jesse Sinclair Dewlow seems especially adept at. The 90s AM radio bookends disguise some very affecting and lovingly rendered takes on Linda Smith, Pearls Before Swine and Kevin Ayers, which remind me a fair bit of the submerged noise pop of Flying Saucer Attack, while the take on Massive Attack's Hymn for the Big Wheel feels quietly apocalyptic, trip hop reimagined through the lens of 90s underground US cassette culture. We're fond of our pisstaking around here no doubt, but to couch it in such wonky charm? Well, my friend, you've hit the jackpot. Edition of 100 and a whole lot more fun. Smile, won't you goddamnit?