Information about the Bolton-based band The Irony Board is beyond scarce. The new collection of the group's tunes, Unfinished Business, is out now via The Beautiful Music, and it's largely superb, offering up flashes of music that feels like post-C86 stuff in a big way. A listener's only frustration is at how little information is out there about the band. Still, that dearth of info almost adds to the mystery here.
"Bus Stop Bravado" is clanging goodness in the manner of Television Personalities, while the spry "Influenza" imagines an odd mix of The Clientele and The Small Faces. This is largely bracing stuff, and a fan of this kind of thing will find lots to love here. And if some of this, like the fine "It's Casual", harks back to the kind of British indie that proliferated in the mid-Eighties, the rougher "December's Embers" builds on a swell that's very nearly like something from The House of Love. The cut is the real surprise here, and a real gem too. We know the players here -- Johny Nocash, with Tony Turner, Matt Pendlebury and Andrew Kellington -- but have few other details about the context in which they made this music. Although I suppose that might not matter when numbers like "Hatty's Back", a Shack-echoing winner near the end of the album, charm so thoroughly.
Unfinished Business is out now via The Beautiful Music.
[Photo: The Beautiful Music]