ALL years beyond 1970 have left the building. Time stands still for The Stands in the West Coast of America that so enthralled The Thrills last year, as the young Liverpudlians chirpily reinvent the psychedelic Byrds and re-tune Bob Dylan's early electric guitar.
They have booked into the Learn To Play The Beatles' Way clinic too, and so the world has the new La's, rather than the next Coral.
Light of finger as a Scouse scally, they have that Liverpool knack of making melodies instantly familiar yet somehow not too familiar, while the band sounds as if they have been playing together, easy, gentle and harmonious, since birth.
They are cheeky chaps, new single Here She Comes Again being a brazen riposte to The La's There She Goes. Yet just when all this sweet, nasal classicism threatens to become a mere Merseybeat fame academy, The Stands stretch out in a waltzing coda to The Way She Does to suggest songwriter Howie Payne has more to reveal next time.
Updated: 08:37 Thursday, February 26, 2004
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