JD: I really liked that, there was bits of that that made me think ELO goes shoegaze kind of thing, you know. I don't know how to describe that beautiful keyboard stanza in there but I like all the discordant little bits of guitar and stuff.

B: I was quite into that, I liked the sound of his voice. The chorus has got that serene sailing thing that Doves do quite well I thought; someone on the chatroom just mentioned Grandaddy as well which I think's pretty astute. Yeah, best so far from me, I think.

AC: They've won the chatroom, they came up with Grandaddy, that was a brilliant reference, I saw that typed out and that's what it is, which is good, for a band from Brighton to have a bit of an American influence. But they've kept their soul, I think. This is better than anything they've done for a long time.

S: This could be one of those songs that keeps growing on you the more you listen to it - I think you're probably right, John Clarke in the chatroom, thank you very much.

CMU Daily Young Brighton band Electric Soft Parade first caught our ears with their post-Brit pop psychedelic rock in 2002 when they scored a couple of hits with Silent to the Dark II and Empty At The End. With If That's The Case the band are back with a bang. It's dominated by a sparkling organ sound and their trademark fuzzy guitars as well as boasting a marvellously catchy riff, and is backed with an interesting take on Sparks' Happy Hunting Ground. The new tune will be followed by a third album - No Need To Be Downhearted - at the end of April.

Crud Magazine It's nice to have something to fall back on, isn't it. And thanks to the work Alex and Tom White put in early with their pleasing debut Holes In The Wall they have still got Electric Soft Parade for when indie supergroup du jour Brakes stops being funny... their new stuff, starting with the single If That's The Case, Then I Don't Know sounds to these ears like a bleeping Dandy Warhols / Talking Heads hybrid which is certainly no bad thing.

Fingertips MP3 Blog At once squonky and lithe, the latest effort from the British brother duo the Electric Soft Parade features anthemic chords and resounding beats, scuffed up fetchingly with fuzzy guitars and electronic blips and boops. Add the nicely vulnerable, Brit-poppy vocals and the whole manages to trump the sum of its parts--quite an accomplishment, as the parts themselves are pretty darned keen.

A casual know-how informs both the song structure and the production; we get a masterly mix of rhythm and melody, guitar and drum, busy-ness and spaciousness, loud and soft. The loud-soft thing is especially cool, since the White boys (Tom's on drums) aren't offering a standard sort of "here's the soft part, here's the loud part" approach as much as utilizing the dynamic range of sound throughout, much as a first-rate black and white photograph will display the blackest black, the whitest white, and many gradations of grey in between.

Another cool thing is the nifty coda: note at 4:02 how the song's drive shifts gears, the beat moving to swinging triplets, before the drums pretty much disintegrate, electronically. Or something like that. The song will be found on the band's next CD, No Need To Be Downhearted, their third full-length, scheduled for an April release on Better Looking Records. The MP3 is via the Better Looking site.

The Tripwire The Tripwire crew has been digging the new record, No Need To Be Downhearted, for quite some time now. It is one of the finer records to land on our desks this year, jam-packed with well-crafted indie pop songs that should give them the attention that they deserve here in the US.

The video for the killer first single, If That's The Case, Then I Don't Know, shows the band taking part in a talent competition. We agree with the dude in the middle... ESP totally deserves a 10.