Truthpaste - I Don’t Know Either

‘I Don’t Know Either’, this debut EP from Manchester-formed outfit Truthpaste, is so brimming with quintessential indie pop that it’s hard not to think of the optimistic spirit of the late-‘00s, a time when this style – the gang backing vocals, assorted instrumentation clamouring in and out, half an eye out towards trad folk – was fully in vogue. As such, the shimmy of opener ‘Never Gonna Give’ makes like a fully-realised Two Door Cinema Club radio hit, and both ‘Bus Song’ and ‘Friendship Is The Truth’, on which vocal duties are swapped back-and-forth while gang backing vocals make an appearance, bring to mind a spirited early Los Campesinos!. Notable too, are hints of math rock to the shifts on ‘Swill To The Swine’, that the saxophone on ‘Bus Song’ hits exactly where a guitar solo otherwise might, and that somehow in the past decade-plus, it’s become unusual for a pure indie pop vocal to sound so crisp on a recording. It all makes for ‘I Don’t Know Either’ to at once evoke a wholly specific sound, but do so while also remaining fresh.