‘Funny For A Girl’ doesn’t sound like Cancel The Astronaut’s second EP. It has the songwriting panache and a sheen more familiar with a major label release than just another EP.

Or, perhaps, more familiar with today’s MTV audience. This Edinburgh band are currently providing the theme music to MTV UK’s web-based and Scottish imprinted series ‘Being Victor’, and their synth-doused sound is perfectly attuned to mainstream indie cliques.

It’s the title track and EP opener that provides the anthem for ‘Being Victor’, and for all its catchy pomp, its debatable lyrics – ‘ahh ha ha you’re funny for, ee hee hee a girl’ – and its languid pace, more akin to the jelly-legged walk back down a mountain than the thrust of a record opener, makes for a missed-a-trick beginning.

Good thing then that ‘She Said She Loves Somebody Else’ ups the pace a bit. Its jaunty percussion and bopping rhythms impress, despite some synth effects that are only just on the right side of detraction and distraction. Much like the perfect homemade soup, all the components majestically infuse together to give birth to something new, a profitable act of concoction replicated on the following track ‘Things I Shouldn’t Tell You’, a fellow galloping track of melody with break-downs and lulls in just the right places.

‘Standing Still’, this EP’s curveball, morphing from a Death Cab For Cutie-tinged lament to a post-rock guitar thrasher and back again, but perhaps most impressively, doesn’t feel like it is a mere tag-on. It’s left to ‘Listen’ to end the EP, reverting to type again – but by this time, like annoying Auntie Agatha, the whimsical synth threatens to outstay its welcome, but Cancel The Astronauts’ talent for penning pop-indie-rock anthems does enough to mask the superfluous electronica.

It’s only with the last track that a Scottish accent really rears its head, but with ‘Funny For A Girl’, Cancel The Astronauts show that their talent and pop appeal is too big for home country Scotland. Go forth and fly the flag.

Chris Cope

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