Neat People - Baby I'm Bored

Hailing from the squaddie-infested Essex town of Colchester and nearby Chelmsford, NeatPeople have arrived just in time to stop pop from becoming a dirty word. With shades of Dexys, XTC, Talking Heads and fellow townsmen Blur, NeatPeople strike a blow against the homogeneity of the charts and the carbon copy posturing of too-cool-for-school indie boys. All in their early twenties, the band met variously at music college, while serving popcorn and cleaning toilets, and played their first gig two years ago at Chelmsfords Army & Navy, a venue which now trades as a sports bar a fitting analogy for the generic diet of rubbish NeatPeople are determined to stamp out: "We want to make music that people can scratch the surface of and find something other than shit beneath their fingernails." Putting their training days in the obligatory dodgy metal and covers bands behind them, NeatPeople are steaming ahead in their pursuit of the perfect pop sound. Singer Gary is chief songwriter, providing the backbone of tunes that are then thrashed out in a unit on a Colchester industrial estate, the band battling fumes from the car re-sprayers next door. A very English sound emerges, influenced by the remarkable in the mundane, by motorways and aeroplanes and friends and boredom and trees and computers and sheds. The sound of the suburbs indeed. Ambitious, charming, pretension-free and with a dash of beguiling innocence, your sister will want to shag them; your mum will want to have them round for tea. And no doubt soon the whole family will be buying their records.

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