Geography Of The Moon. Fake Flowers Never Die. These monikers alone invoke all of the sounds that play out through this slow release album. Playfully sombre with a wry new wave smile, smoked half-lit melodies just off optimistic. Take a trip through its warm post-punk lullaby textures and rest up in its sub-goth pop sonics.

As we join up the dots between the ethereal 80’s, dark-twee 90’s indie, and their 2000’s revivalists War Paint and Frankie Rose (to mention just a selection), it’s hard not to soak up the nostalgia. There’s what sounds like a love for the songs as they’re crafted and a patience for stripped down delivery.

Looped clean guitars and minimalist pulses, silvery vocals that flow, ebb and float, touches of folk psychedelic… It’s a full blown concoction in demo-tape proportions, with an easy dirt-free lo-fi glaze.

Of the tracks that stick close to that sometimes too-worked template of clean loops and kitsch sample drums, ‘Deadbeat Poet’ outshines those around it. It’s wistful and breezy, self-deprecating, easy on the surface with mean words below. If there was a sweet spot between Courtney Barnett and the second act of Joy Division’s ‘Closer’, GOTM have nailed it down beautifully.  

Where additions cut through they are welcome. The thin violins of ‘Muse Prayer’ and ‘Ikaria’ add the depth and the husk of their strings. The airy synth organ that runs through ‘Deadbeat Poet’ gives the song its low end shine and glow. And while there are fine cuts scattered throughout the first half, it’s the next side that shows off the album.

‘Fleeing Lights’ is a sarcastic cathartic half-anthem that ramps up the speed and sly humour. There’s a gleefully vengeful delivery to the vocals and a tag-line it’s tough not to sing to. ‘3 Years 2 Days’ brings in home brewed electro as it runs like a B-movie chase scene. Insomnia twists with the alt-indie jangle that ripped through C86 compilations.

While some tracks might play safe and get lost in another, these three show off the want and willingness of this duo to drift out in surprising directions. Between A-side highlights and a B-side that flies by, ‘Fake Flowers Never Die‘ is an intriguing slice of deceptively slick new wave indie.   

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