If You Happy With You Need Do Nothing

Music
20 Mar 01

Alfie were, for a long while, Badly Drawn Boy's backing band - and you'll certainly recognise that plangent guitar sound, that moony-eyed cello and those sombre Northern horns, not to mention an innocence, a lightness of touch, an absolute lack of guile mucking up the melancholy which they share with their famous ex-collaborator.

Alfie wear their innocence at a rakish angle, and so their charming ditty-melodies, plasticky Atari-sounding Stylophones and tinking toy glockenspiels share equal pride of place with a kinetic, unknown-quantity kind of rambunctiousness, coming on at times (as on the swirly sturm-und-bang of 'Talking Song') like an awkward, but excitingly visceral, preteen Stone Roses