On paper, things don’t bode well for the UK’s Bombay Bicycle Club: Their curry house-inspired name implies a wacky and erroneous grasp of irony that wears a traffic cone for a hat; they started out playing funk songs to their school assembly; and the ink’s barely dry on their A2 certificates. BBC might be teenagers themselves but they are not just a band for their age group, as evidenced by debut album “I Had The Blues But I Shook Them Loose”, a record with its heart in Seattle and Portland instead of Camden, and all the better for it. The influence of US alt.gods Pavement and Guided By Voices looms large with the slacker vocals and lo-fi strumming of the guitars, not to mention some killer bass riffs in “Evening/Morning”.

by Mark Emge