Home Counties

When disenchantment runs high, when city life isn't all it's cracked up to be - when you're forking out seven quid for a pint, shivering in a queue for a club night you don't really care about, getting ripped off by landlords over Blu Tack stains, and squeezing in studio sessions around a 9-5 schedule, there is only one logical response: fun.

That's exactly what Home Counties provide on their debut album, Exactly As It Seems. A newly purchased synthesiser, a fresh outlook, and a steady diet of early 2000s pop kicked open a world of melodic possibility for the band, resulting in an album that's upbeat, swapping wry social commentary for personal experience and big tunes.

Produced in its entirety by the band's guitarist Conor Kearney, and mixed by Andy Savours (Black Country New Road, Róisín Murphy, The Kills), the album captures the band's live performances, a display of eclecticism with a focus on melody.

Thematically, the album traverses the ups and downs of London life in your late twenties; laments on renting and landlord issues on the Gang of Four/Devo-indebted "You Break It, You Bought It", turning 25 and not wanting to go clubbing anymore on the agitated indie-disco of "Uptight", and fear of social isolation in old age on the shapeshifting art-rock of "Wild Guess".