On the lesser-spotted ten-inch single format, and Christ, this sounds rough. It also sounds more like My Bloody Valentine than My Bloody Valentine did – just very very much more poorly recorded. I like it a lot, and I also like the sleeve art, which has cool typewritery stuff not unlike Ha Ha Sound by Broadcast. It’s not as good, and looks computery, whereas Ha Ha Sound looks typewritery.

Hmm. Totally ace for the first ten or fifteen seconds, then just gets boring. I’m totally sick of hearing about George bloody Bush. Protest singers died out for a reason.

Annoying mixed-case pretensions aside, this is dead good. It sounds big, and important, without being self-important. There’s something commandingly serious about it, but it doesn’t take itself seriously. I like trains also, but they’re just so crap in this country, and I doubt they will ever be anything else. I have a revolutionary theory about what should be done with the British railway network, which I may one day share with the world. But not today.

There’s a huge fuss about these, but then, there’s also quite a big fuss about the Kaiser Chiefs, so that means less than nothing. I’m also slightly prejudiced in that I think they have a crap name, and I don’t like anything to do with monkeys. On the other hand, I believe they’re from out Rotherham way, and my girlfriend has a Rotherham postcode, so they’re practically my mates.

It’s not a bad single - kind of fun, and the b-side has not bad words. There’s also a very pretty girl on the front of the sleeve, but it’s not enough to make me want to drop sixty quid to get the first single. In fact, now I think about it, there’s something Kaiser Chiefsy about it. Suddenly I feel so dirty…

Full marks to whoever said it sounds like Roxy Music, but so what? It’s good! We know there’s nothing new under the sun, so there should be no shame in sounding like someone else, so long as you do something with it. Old Mustafa and whats-her-face (see above) sound like they’ve sampled MBV on the first song of side 2, but they do it with enough flair to still kick arse. Ditto this. Kind of derivative, but a couple of short, snappy, cracking tunes. Some surface noise on side two, vinyl fans.

I wish I was cool enough to like northern soul, and rich enough to buy it. This is a good compilation for people like me, because it’s bands I am uncool enough to have heard of, like Comet Gain and the Butterflies of Love, doing songs I’d otherwise never have heard of. I like the Kicker one best, and it sounds pretty authentic to me, which probably shows you what I know. The only remotely proper northern soul record I have is A Lovers’ Concerto by The Toys, and I’ve heard Ken Bruce play that on Radio 2 in between rounds of Popmaster. Like I said, I’m just not cool.