If the petition to prevent Kanye from headlining Glastonbury affirmed anything, it was that the tribalistic belligerence of indie-rock fans is still very much intact. The debut from Liverpool’s Circa Waves should satisfy those keening for “real music”: buoyant, boyish and polished, it’s an album consisting of four men, two guitars and a bunch of Reading and Leeds festival-rousing choruses. Young Chasers is the sound of being 17, and specifically being 17 in 2005: retro(ish)-fetishism is rife, with traces of We Are Scientists, the Kooks, the Libertines and Razorlight, while frontman Kieran Shudall cavorts his adolescence sweetly, pining for “T-shirt weather”, fearing that “Friday night will break me” and vulnerably wishing he were not “a long way from home” on single Fossils. What it lacks in boundary-pushing, it makes up for in sturdy songcraft and youthful exuberance – crowdsurfing, band practice, chasing girls and missing mum. For 40 wide-eyed minutes, it’s if alt-R&B never happened.
