Paleophonic

There are times when you develop a bond with a band which goes beyond the merely musical, and the very mention of The Rubinoos always brings a nostalgic smile to my face.

Back in 1977 you may recall that there was a bit of a stir going on in young people's music and quite a few of us were keen to get in on the action. The outfit I was proud to be part of were called The Polite Force and, despite the fact that our attempts to find a junction point between The Monkees and Television hadn't yet made it as far as the general public, we were a band and let everyone who came within our orbit know it.

Thus, one Wednesday morning in work one of the office section-heads collared me in the canteen and enquired - in all seriousness - "Were your band on The Old Grey Whistle Test last night? There was a bloke who I could've sworn was you jumping around with some mob who sounded just like what you said your crowd were at."

God, at least three-fifths of The Polite Force would've killed to sound like The Rubinoos in 1977 and I apparently looked like one of them - which certainly beats being mistaken for Rat Scabies.

Two decades later I'm relieved to report that mine and Tommy Dunbar's physiognomies have gone their separate ways, but thankfully Mr.D's reputation as a prince of Power Pop remains intact. The Rubinoos' user-friendly update of classic Pop virtues was too out of kilter to gain mass acceptance in '77, they'd largely lost interest by the time The Knack cashed in on the same ticket two years later and their forays into over-produced synth-centric territory in the early '80s were nothing short of disastrous. It's heartening therefore that they've decided to ditch trying to second-guess the market and revert to what they do best.

'Amnesia' is a glorious opener, a shining ready-made radio gem. Tune, chorus, middle-eight, perfect harmonies, intoxicating guitars - all that old-fashioned stuff - and it's far from alone on Paleophonic. 'Early Winter' boasts one of those melody sequences which seems to continually build; 'You Don't Know Her' offers rollicking Rockabilly; 'No More Where She Came From' is to the point and punchy and the whole shebang closes with a surf exploration of the Star Trek theme called 'Surf Trek'.

On the basis of Paleophonic, The Rubinoos remain one of life's great treasures.