The Wearsiders have little in common with the Bury men musically, but they seem to be in a similar place to Guy Garvey's mob pre-Mercury.
Plumb, their latest Memphis Industries disc, is a punchy collection of hook-laden tracks, and its compactness – 15 tracks in 35 minutes – is a more commercial proposition than the meandering, if excellent, 70 minutes that was 2010's Field Music (Measure). Single A New Town and BBC Radio 6 favourite (I keep thinking about) A New Thing were also excellent live, where the complexities of the band's prog-pop, as it has been termed, are reproduced in precise detail but the ensemble sound is more powerful and funkier than on disc.
