You wouldn’t have a clue that Laura Lee and Andreya Casablanca were in a group based in Berlin in 2016 by listening to their first album. Even the presence of one song in German, Walnuss, wouldn’t convince you that In My Head was anything other than something unearthed from some US liberal arts college after sitting in a record shop rack since the early 90s. Gurr’s sound is bright and shiny: not the polished metallic sheen of state-of-the-art studios but the tinny reflectiveness of the foil wrapper around a tube of Rolos. In My Head sprints through its 11 songs in half an hour, dispensing fizzing, punky guitar pop at every turn, with some amusingly baffling lyrics leaping out along the way: “Kissing you feels like 1984!” offers Breathless. It’s very much Indie As It Used to Be, all the way through, but In My Head serves as a reminder that the combination of good tunes and bags of enthusiasm can gloss over a lot of shortcomings: the Mo Tucker drumming, downstrummed guitars and just-about-there harmonies of #1985 sound like bottled joy.
