34) That Petrol Emotion Babble

One year on from one of the best debuts ever That Petrol Emotion returned with Babble.

This was there moment. In Glasgow I bored people about them, I still do. I’m rarely right about much but I was right about TPE, they were brilliant.

When I mention TPE to people not obsessed like me, nine times out of ten they say, “Big Decision, that was them wasn’t it?” The correct response is “Aye, and why didn’t you sodding well buy it and make it Top Ten like it should have been,” but I’m a mild mannered fifty-one-year-old man so “Aye, that’s them,” is my brave response. Seriously though number forty-three, what a bloody disgrace.

When the site is huge (cough cough) and I’m on Desert Island Discs, Big Decision will be one of my eight. One of the catchiest riffs ever, simple as.

Opener and second single Swamp swaggers in and should have followed Big Decision into the top ten.

For What It’s Worth showed the band were equally at home with slow atmospheric songs and Steve Mack was now an assured front man.

In The Playpen has excellent doo doo doo’s from the band, this doesn’t sound like much but really enhances the song and Inside should have been a single spotlight on Mack playing to 50,000 with the band excellent restrained playing in the background.

The album closes with drummer Ciaran McLaughlin’s stunning Creeping to the Cross with Mack on his own before the beat comes in and crunching guitars join us at thirty seconds. This is the band taking us out on a high.

“And I’d rather be the devil than go Creeping to the Cross”

Magnificent, there was better still to come.

9/10

GIVE IT A STREAM: Big Decision