Take Yourself To Town: A Few Words About The New Album From District Repair Depot (Robert Halcrow From Picturebox And Stephan Evans)

The new album from District Repair Depot is the sort of thing that deserves a whole lot of attention. And I can only hope that once people hear the XTC-ish indie-pop here on the band's self-titled debut that this band gets a bunch of appreciative fans. Essentially a collaboration between Stephan Evans and Robert Halcrow (Picturebox), District Repair Depot has a real knack for making this sort of music, and for making it sound natural and entirely unaffected.

"Barry Jones" sounds like something Ray Davies, or Andy Partridge, could have written, while the jaunty "Aeroplane Song" recalls early solo recordings from Paul McCartney. Elsewhere, "Signal Box" echoes Davies again, this time that brief period when The Kinks affected a vague country twang, even as "Take Yourself To Town" is a swirling bit of Britpop whimsy, equal parts mid-Nineties Blur and The Dukes of Stratosphear. The languid "CRUST" is very nearly "Whatever" by Oasis but for a couple of chord changes and one wonders if the cut is meant to be a piss-take on the work of the brothers from Manchester, even as the more gentle "Escape To Margate" closes the record in one of many echoes of Martin Newell's stuff to be found here on this fine album.

District Repair Depot make music that is superbly in line with the obvious influences that the band is drawing from. And to name-check all those other bands as I've done in the course of this review is not to make this seem derivative but, rather, to highlight just how perfectly the music of District Repair Depot fits next to that of those other acts.

District Repair Depot is out now. More details via the band's official Facebook page, or the official Gare Du Nord Records Facebook page.