I must confess that when I first wedged this rainbow-scattering silver disc into the machine, and pressed the button that made the magical people inside it sing and make merry, I was pretty convinced that this wouldn’t be for me at all.  Not a bit.  All this happity clappity hippity dippity stuff reminded me of the Polyphonic Spree (“a lithium-fuelled explosion in a smock factory”, I called them in my less bitter days), and I felt I was being force-fed helium by a dancing clown and his loony grinning dancing bear.

It gets much better with repeat listens though, the funny little car explodes and strews oddly shaped scraps of plastic about the place like it was a map of Micronesia. Moments like the weird casio/echo breakdown in “Ed Is A Portal”, the backwards skronkiness of “Pony’s OG”, and the shouty tribal hoedown clearing uncovered in “New Ceremonial Music” make Love Is Simple sound more like the produce of that other Collective, the Animal one.  If you can stomach the sugar, you’ll find enough odd bitty textures in this jam to keep any travelling circus troupe you choose to care for happy, and their bread well spread.

Available now from Young God Records.