Track: Eliza and the Bear release new single, Friends

We all do things to make us happy. I like buying records, and hanging out with my family, playing with my children. Usual things, things that I guess a lot of people would list as being their among their favourite things to do. In my younger days, I used to visit football grounds. I specialised in not watching my own team. I think it was that feeling that the game could wash over you, you could take it or leave it, and no-one would bother you, or care what you were doing there. There was none of the passion that came with your own team, so you could let yourself become absorbed in the game, without having to think about work or home, or being overdrawn (come on, everyone in the world is, aren’t they?) or that funny noise that comes on when you slow down at junctions.

I don’t know what London five-piece Eliza and the Bear do to make themselves happy. What I do know is that the band; James Kellegher, Callie Noakes, Martin Dukelow, Chris Brand and Paul Kevin Jackson don’t contain either an Eliza (surprising, maybe) or a bear (perhaps a little less so) but they do make this riotously catchy and likeable indie-pop. New track Friends pits perfectly into the mould. Right from the off it has this sort of Los Campesinos quirkiness and supreme melodic skill. The skill to kick you round the (indie) dancefloor, and skill leave you with a smile on your face.

Actually, maybe it’s friends that make Eliza and the Bear happy. Me, I don’t go to football so much anymore. But I can replace it in my list of things that make me happy with Eliza and the Bear.