Rizzle Kicks: Stereo Typical – review

Brighton's Rizzle Kicks attended the credibility-squashing Brit School – a fact coyly glossed over in their press biography. But there's no need for embarrassment – it's not as if the all-singing, all-rapping Harley Alexander-Sule and Jordan Stephens were ever going to appeal to anyone past puberty anyway. Having said that, their sprightly pop – most widely heard so far on Olly Murs's No 1 single Heart Skips a Beat – is the dance equivalent of a Girls Aloud single: clever, memorable and utterly infectious. Ska, country and 80s hip-hop are the cute soundbed for quickfire lyrics that reveal them to be typical teenage boys: gruffly macho when they think they can get away with it ("I'm what's known as a homewrecker," they boast unconvincingly on Homewrecker), but more often tormented by adolescent woes ("Now I've got grass stains on my brand-new trainers!" goes the salsa-scented Down with the Trumpets). Sweet.