Album: CVC - Get Real

CVC stands for Church Village Collective, a six-piece who hail from the countryside near Cardiff. They were the best live act I saw last year (of a long list which includes Melt Yourself Down, Paul McCartney, The Prodigy and Wet Leg).

It was a joyously raucous and contagious gig, front-loaded with Seventies rock vibes and a sense of fun, so I’m intrigued to hear if their debut album can live up to it. But they’re a different proposition on record. The raucous rock wildness is missing, but the Seventies are there in a mellower, cheesier form.

The best bits of Get Real, recorded in guitarist Elliott Bradfield’s living room but sounding fatter than that, are very catchy, but songs such as jolly weed ode “Anogo” and the Hawaiian-ish strummery of single “Winston” recall Supertramp and stoned Seventies Beach Boys, and sometimes even Jimmy Buffet, rather than Wings or Lynyrd Skynyrd. At other points Harry Nilsson is a reference, or even Noughties bands who picked up the baton, such as The Feeling.

The derivative factor can be off-putting. “Fun” music, which this is, can be divisive. The question is, whether the songs will make themselves felt, over time, beyond their idiomatic references; whether CVC will gain the broad appeal of a Scissor Sisters or a Wet Leg, or will they just be an Orson. At this point, after three listens over the last month, the tunefulness, harmonies and retro-pop suss mean there are stand-outs, such as the aforementioned, as well as the bounding funk of “Mademoiselle”, the throbbing “Docking the Pay”, and the single “Good Morning Vietnam”, with its fluid guitar solo and smoky sax.

Best of all, perhaps, in conveying CVC’s cheery (perhaps too cheery!), easy-going good time, is “Sophie”, which appears to be about a friend of theirs not wanting to sing backing vocals. It’s completely genial and as much a chorus-sketch as a full-blown song, but it captures the band’s undeniable charm. The whole album does, actually.

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Below: Watch the video to "Good Morning Vietnam" by CVC