Honestly, I'd just about given up on waiting around for any new guitar group to come and do something that would get to me. While it's fair to say that the Flaming Lips are out there somewhere on behalf of all us chickens, we might remember that this is a band that has been going for as long as the JBC.

Not all the over-forties are so lucky, so talented or persistently unconcerned with the trappings of success. One or two of my acquaintance are adapting to some kind of 21st Century white boy chicken-in-the-basket cabaret lifestyle, gathering for Saga holiday fun at the expense of trotting out some tunes that used to be a matter of life or death to them in their misguided youth. Others huddle, bearded, in basements, making heinous deep techno records, by way of which they wreak their revenge on the thankless youth who ignored their semi-acoustic ramblings. They crank the beat up for ages, then whip it away, leaving the hapless teens, frazzled with ecstasies and bloated with mineral water at a pound a pop, to hear the unmistakable voice of an American cop declaring:

She's your daughter, Mister Wilson
She died of an overdose!
Sorted!

I have actually heard this record. It's tops, as it goes I never said there was anything wrong with any of this.

Of the new groups, the Brits seem chiefly concerned with making the grandest, most vapid emotional declarations over an over-polished and undernourished MOR strum-along, while in the USA there seems to be a sinister tendency towards the deliberately, nay provocatively, incompetent, as though sonic ineptitude and lack of ambition might reveal a more genuine and deeply lovable individual Behind The Music. Bollocks to the lot of them, honestly.

Of course, our favourite big old satellites are still circling out there somewhere: Copey and Mister Hitchcock, Mister Cave and especially - we are double blessed Mister Robert Wyatt. I don't know about you, but much as I love these pop stars from an alternative universe, I honestly don't get around to buying every record they put out.

Every now and again, of course, one of them puts out a whopper, and we're all there, Johnny On The Spot. But it's pretty clear that part of the price you pay for being into the music thing for the long term these days is that if you insist on only making good records, you'll soon cease to be newsworthy. I don't think it's something that bothers those gentlemen in the slightest, of course. You make your choice and God can call you a c*** when you're dead.

Peter Astor bucked all the trends, of course. He went sideways and laid the golden egg.

But I've found this record. It's not particularly new or modern or relevant, though in its own warm and intimate way it is all of those things. All that modern shit is in there, beats and loops and bleeps and that, but what makes this record remarkable is that it is a guitar pop record by a gang of white British guys that does exactly what those kind of records are supposed to do to you.

I do know the man who wrote most of the songs on the record. I've known Tim Keegan since he was a wee lad. He used to put on my band and bring his band to support us. He's been making music ever since the eighties, and I've kept up with a lot of it.

This is, perhaps, Not a Good Thing. It makes it far too easy for me to think of Tim as Talented Youth With Melodic Guitar Band, Heart O'Gold. But Tim must be around thirty now, and, boy, is he ever hitting his stride. Even so, I had to listen to this release three or four times before the sheer magnificence of the whole enterprise hit me.

But, reader, you will have guessed it by now. It has hit me.

Initially a few tunes really jumped out and seized my attention. Oddly enough, they seemed to be the tunes from the end of the LP, not the start. They struck me as so fine that I had to investigate further.

Stay On The Line was the tune that first did it. I was smoking and playing backgammon and it completely stole my mind away. I still think of it as the stand-out track on the record. It's utterly gorgeous and intimate and real. The sound is phat and lush and all made of real instruments: stand-up bass, guitars, all that shit. Perfectly in tune in every way. What follows is a beautiful love song that turns into a mental sing-along rumpus that many bands would kill to have written. It's called I've got Everything (We Need)

It may or may not feature Mister Hitchcock or Mister Peter Buck, but that's certainly Ringo on drums. Of course, I'm intrigued by now so I lose at backgammon. There follows a mad instrumental that sounds like Calexico gone electronic. I can tell you that it went really well with the Leeds-Lazio game on TV tonight.

So I've started reviewing the record at the end. Bah! I don't do this very often. I should have started by saying that the opening tune is faintly funky, arch and ambitious. Tim's lush, healing vocal tells you 'l need a torch if you're following me before leading us into a sweet Boxtops style fake soul chorus of enormous merit.

The New You , which follows is deeply lovely and probably deeply ironic, but Tim sings it so sweetly that you almost believe him. Therein lies the agony of it, and therein the beauty.

Disconnected comes next, reminding your correspondent of the late lamented Perfect Disaster at their most poignant. It takes you from the weird atavistic memory of some long-forgotten and probably deeply uncool hit from when you were about eleven to a heart shattering Velvets Third moment in seconds. You are not ready and you are left gasping.

And so it goes. As you listen to this record you will hear echoes of the Beatles, the Kinks, Scott Walker, Peter Astor, Spiritualised and the Friends of Dean Martinez.

Gulp!- as Syd Barrett turns into the Smiths before your very ears! On one track you can clearly hear David J and Nick Lowe down the pub when Shane McGowan and Nick Cave slope in. Lap steel and tremolo arm wrestle it out in the smoky room before a Massive Stupid Flute Thing Chorus turns up and it all kicks off. You'll be thinking of The Prisoner and you'll be thinking whatever happened to that lovely young Lou Reed boy and you'll be thinking about John Lennon and maybe you'll be thinking about Deirdre O'Donoghue.

But this is an evocative album, not a derivative one.

His voice rings loud and clear throughout, even though he is unquestionably a man given to different vocal stylings. He sounds confident and happy and he should do. He has produced the best record of his life so far.

The instrumentation and the production are tough, sensitive and inventive throughout.

It is my suspicion that the record would sound quite American to British ears, and identifiably British to American ones. That would only be fair reflection of the fact that Tim and the band do, in fact, spend a great deal of time playing in the USA and hanging with American musicians. This is a record from a certain tradition of songwriting, but it is by no means anachronistic. It's tempting to refer to David Gray White Ladder, but the sound here is simultaneously more real and also more effectively produced.

As a casual listening experience it demands nothing and offers a great deal. Give it time on a nice phat pair of speakers and it will actually do your head in.

So there it is. Cynical old shit with a trolley full of Lee Perry albums gives rave review to English songwriter mate with white pop album. There must be something in it.

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Pat