GOOD SHOES//
THINK BEFORE YOU SPEAK//
BRILLE//
WORDS: CAMERON COOK

For a second there, I thought that Bloc Party's A Weekend In The City was the death knell of this whole New Britpop wave that has had the indie world at its feet for the past couple of years (kind of like that last Le Tigre album that totally killed New York forever). Yeah, there were a couple of bleak weeks there. So bleak in fact, that I forgot the upcoming prospect of the very, very long-awaited Good Shoes album, Think Before You Speak. The band caught my ear for the first time about a year ago when their first single, "We Are Not The Same" debuted on their myspace page, a wondrous two-and-a-half-minute bubbly jaunt about, well, not being the same as the person you love and shit being fucked up. I spun it for days on end.

Good Shoes' brilliance could have stopped there--just another four-piece post-teen band writing songs about girls and alcohol--and the world wouldn't have ended. Bands come and go, and except for some choice fashion sensibility (I've pegged the band's style as Homeless Indie Librarian), Good Shoes aren't, at least at first glance, the most individual of acts. They could have faded into the background like so many Others before them, but instead, it looks like they've recorded a classic album. If things go well for these boys, we'll be listening to Think... years and years from now, and a BBQ with our wives and husbands, reminiscing on good times.

The mini-masterpieces are abundant: "All In My Head", the band's second single and the first whiff of true pop genius, bashes itself into your head with such force that it stays lodged for days, its self-deprecation ("I'm a good shag but I find nobody fit/I play in a band but I've got no talent") becoming the soundtrack of your life. "Morden" is as Smiths-ian as it gets, and with Morrissey being his batty old self and Marr joining forces, as it were, with Modest Mouse, the track's jangly guitars and mournful lyrics about disaffected life in urban Britain are more than welcome. Good Shoes' bleeding hearts come peeling off their sleeves during "Never Meant to Hurt You", the sweetest break-up song in recent memory, but it's the mid-album "Small Town Girl" (which I can only hope is a Bronski Beat reference) that turns out to be the hidden pearl here: it's such light, bouncy, lovable and sunny slice of utter pop bliss, it would make an Eskimo feel summery. It will transport you to a magical world where the Strokes don't suck, and, as the song itself goes, "Everything's OK/Everything's all right" Expect 2007 to be the year of Good Shoes.