[music] DOGS DIE IN HOT CARS - Please Describe Yourself (V2 International)

Another spot-the-influences band, but with different influences: Oingo Boingo (mostly in the vocals), Big Country, Dexy's Midnight Runners and middle-years XTC. They don't salvage the XTC nods quite as awesomely as The Killers handled their rendition of boring-era Psychedelic Furs but, just like the Killers, they have enough else going on.

Every time I hear one of these postpunk-revival bands it becomes clearer that it's a trend which transcends any particular sound, and so harder to defend against charges of being "nostalgia". But that's okay: were we done with it the first time around?

Pop music lives to reuse its own past, and based on how the last ten years have gone, I think I'd rather see it do so openly than be forced into a corner by the cult of Perpetual Newness. These days, "new" too often means harder! faster! more! But I don't think it's a coincidence that Franz Ferdinand, the Killers, Hot Hot Heat and Dogs Die In Hot Cars seem fundamentally unserious, unlike their idols. This wave of bands is the best of the 80s underground repeated as farce, and I'm glad it took long enough to happen that we can sit back and enjoy.

(These particular guys maaaay not have had a whole album in them yet... the amazing "Godhopping" can be streamed from the band's Flash-ugly website, and along with "Pasttimes & Lifestyles" it makes a better case for the band than the album as a whole does.)

(Second postscript: I'm placing a pre-emptive curse on the head of the first music writer who I see referring to individual members of this band as "Dogs".)