The Shop Window: Daysdream

I think most Twitter users can agree that Twitter is a truly awful place. The current owner (I refuse to use his stupid re-branded name for the site) eviscerated what scant moderation they had and made the platform safe for the very worst of humanity. Plus, said owner is doing his part to ruin his adopted nation, amplifying the voices of Nazis and Trumpies and anti-vaxxers and the other dregs of society. It's pretty gross.

Yet despite frequent pledges to myself that I should just get the hell out, Music Twitter remains a little refuge I still enjoy, an online community of fellow music nerds. And occasionally it's an ideal source of intelligence on new music which you'll never find in the ordinary music press.

Which brings me to this delightful LP from earlier this year. I stumbled across it through one of those only-on-Twitter acts of musical serendipity. Woke up the other morning to see a random post, from an account I don't follow, praising one of my favorite jangle-pop compilations, 2020's Strum & Thrum (collecting a couple dozen rarities from long-forgotten 80s college radio bands). Turned out the post was made by a UK indie band, The Shop Window, and I checked out their Bandcamp page and discovered they're actually pretty great!

Daysdream is a lovely collection of UK jangle pop in the best traditions of the 80s/90s C86 scene--traces of acts like the Stone Roses and Trash Can Sinatras and Lilac Time and the Go-Betweens and others percolate through the music. It's all very pretty and melodic, occasionally melancholy but usually oozing with buoyant sunshine, with touching harmonies peppered throughout. Check it out on Bandcamp.

"I Run":

"It's A High":