大象传媒

Funfair mirrors are curious things. Looking into their strange, all-a-quiver depths is simultaneously disconcerting and enjoyable, an experience not dissimilar to listening to The Fools 'Enjoy It' EP. Testifying to their helter-skelter imagination, this record shows the commonplace filtered through the fevered minds of its creators and become slippery and surreal.

As we all know, about half the songs ever written are about love, but how many of them compare the fickle human heart to a yo-yo? The answer, precisely one, The Fools' majestic 'Yo-Yo Love'. What's more it's not just the phrasing and curiously apt metaphors that mark them out. What makes them a particularly rare commodity is their attitude; unlike the majority of their contemporaries The Fools positively exude mental well-being. There is not one iota of self-pity, self-lacerating angst or melancholy amongst these seven tracks.

In this regard 'Enjoy It' acts as emotional Tippex. When love, money or identity crises threaten to blot our heroes' copybook, they simply whitewash the bad times away with some good time tunes. As songs including the title track and 'I've Never Had It So Good' serve to emphasise, life is happening right now, best cling on like a limpet and take all the nourishment you can.

Melody and musicianship are the musical watchwords of the Belfast-born, Liverpool based, three-piece. There are echoes of certain other acts on specific tracks, but generally you'd need dental records to identify their influences. Only The Jam-smeared 'Yo-Yo Love' and Kinks-admiring 'I've Never Had It So Good' seem obviously indebted. Elsewhere and particularly on the finest two tracks here, 'Modern Man' and 'We're Not Alone', the glorious three-part harmonies and sweetly twanging guitars, are distinct and individual. These Fools deserve to be taken very seriously indeed.

Francis Jones