The Gist - Interior Windows

Let's get this out of the way before we go any further - the sleeve is doing this record a terrible disservice. Now that's acknowledged, we can move on to more important matters, namely the music... The Gist is/are/were the band Stuart Moxham founded following the breakup of Young Marble Giants, releasing just one album and a few singles in the early 80s. As with a lot of the DIY/post-post punk stuff from that era, time has been kind, the ears of modern audiences seemingly more attuned to those off-kilter sounds then they were on first release. Being fair, it's easier to understand The Gist now given what we know came after. You've essentially got the template for indiepop here: delicate sensibility, ramshackle arrangements, lowkey/fi production, tongue-in-cheek-disguising-tears-in-eyes. Since their solitary album, Embracing the Herd, has undergone a degree of critical reevaluation/cultural appreciation, Interior Windows does a sterling job of mopping up the loose ends, bringing together 13 previously unheard tracks alongside re-presenting the tracks from their debut 7". The result is so distinctly British you'd possibly baulk at this if it were made now. But there's a infectious playfulness and fearless innocence in Moxham's Kinks-y music hall-isms, childlike sincerity and wonky instrumentation that's hugely endearing and portends to a much wider cultural shift that was just round the corner, wrapped up in much the same clothes as TVP, Whaam!, Marine Girls, and the world orbiting around the Homosexuals. Dunno why, but i'm craving sitting in a half empty dog-end pub on a weekday afternoon with this floating on the breeze. I can sit at home and pretend, i suppose.