A criticism levelled at many current pop acts is a tendency to look over their shoulders, maybe two, three decades into the past. While this may be valid it's also true to say that many of these bands do it extremely well, and to their number can be added The Dead 60s.

The Liverpool quartet are signed to the same label as The Coral, but that's pretty much where the similarity ends. In fact the two bands are like chalk and cheese, the Coral's more pastoral take on pop countered by the Dead 60s preoccupation with the Specials and The Jam, boosted by various ghostly sound effects.

From the outset it's clear they don't intend to hang around, and indeed the whole album seems to be over before it began. Whilst that's great on the big single - Riot Radio is an exercise in constriction - other tracks suffer from being cut off too early, among them Nationwide and A Different Age, which doesn't even make two minutes.

What The Dead 60s do possess in abundance is a good strong melody in each song, usually complete with sound effects, good humour and a barrage of guitars in any bridge passage that cares to use them. And in Matt McManamon they have a characterful singer who sounds not unlike Ian McCulloch, with a slightly nasal tone.

The refreshingly basic, no frills approach works well on Ghostfaced Killer, which would be even more effective if it wasn't a devotional to the Specials Ghost Town. Listening to this I was given the picture of a ghoulish vehicle hurtling through the night, with the guitar effects suitably macabre. The 60s make use of this technique once too often unfortunately, despite its effectiveness.

The album's brevity and abundance of tunes are a mostly winning combination however, and when you add the wistfulness of a track like We Get Low, where Matt sings, "I was looking back for home", there's a real feeling of getting beneath the surface.

The grubby bassline of Train To Nowhere presents a gentler side to the band, Charlie Turner's bass revealing itself as a crucial part of their make-up. So it proves in the dubby excursions the band make, and in the funny reference to Batman that provides the main melodic material for Loaded Gun. Bass is the place once again for Soul Survivor, one of the album's choice tracks.

To sum up, an act worth checking out for some energetic, high spirited pop. The '60s may be dead, but as this record proves, the '70s and '80s are anything but.

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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees