Hey. You there. Like ‘music’, do you?

Would you like to hear the sound of a woozy summer’s day, burned onto a compact disc especially for your listening pleasure? Would you like to hear what The Carpenters would sound like if they fused with The Jesus And Mary Chain (and the chick in the band wasn’t quite so anorexic and dead and everything)?

Best check out Joy Zipper, then.

Comprising of unfairly good-looking boyfriend-and-girlfriend-couple Vincent Cafiso and Tabitha Tindale, the Zip (as they shall never be called) have recently unleashed new album The Heartlight Set into the world, letting it out of its cage like some shy romantic leopard. With glasses. Being introduced to a field full of lady leopards.

Heartlight serves to develop the sound of last years masterpiece American Whip (produced by My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields – lord of feedback and all-round hecklerspray hero) into something more fully realised and commercial. Lurching from heartbreaking melancholy - "If life is straight like a line, then I’m dying thirty-three times" – to unabashed soppiness – "If everyone looked like you, then I’d love them all too" – Joy Zipper are one of the few bands capable of crafting their own world. Then staying there and sending out three-minute pop dispatches.

Melody is king in Zipperworld. Five or six listens to Heartlight will ingrain it into your consciousness like Bible Passages to a serial killer. Humming it will be unavoidable. Resistance is useless. They’re a pair of tune-wielding Daleks, no less.

And yet there’s something else. Something indefinable. A dark undercurrent… an otherworldy quality… call it what you will, Joy Zipper have it. It’s pretty much impossible to describe, but a swift hearing of World Doesn’t Care, Alzheimer’s or In The Never-Ending Search For A Suitable Enemy should be introduction enough.

Now, go forth and discover. And when you fall in love with this gently disarming duo, don’t come thanking us. Please. It’ll just make us blush.

[story by C J Davies]