Nothing says England quite like white music. This doesn’t sound like the slightly academic take on pop I was expecting. It has an angular quality to the vocals that would sound quite affected now, but in the context of 1978, I can see it.

Gets you out of your red, white and blues.

There’s an instant Elvis Costello thing for me, which may just be blurring into a generic late-80’s, after punk sort of vibe. I like how keyboard driven a lot of it is, but it sounds like they parted company after the first couple of records so perhaps that sounds will change as I go through it.

I’m not sure I can imagine sitting down and listening to this. It sounds very agitated. Ant Music. Lots of short songs though, and that has much to recommend it. So much of my musical taste seems to have been a search for that perfect pop song, from Velocity Girl onwards – keep it under 120 seconds, don’t be afraid just to stop playing when the song has finished. You really don’t need to repeat that chorus again.

This Is Pop I recognize as a single, but again not sure where precisely I’d have heard it. It has a really interesting twist, without getting too muso, on “pop” where one of the vocals is really sharp, giving it a slightly off kilter vibe. I like that. It must have been difficult to do consistently in the studio I think.

Statue of Liberty feels a lot more like the sort of thing I was expecting. And a clever vocal line.

And continuing the transatlantic theme, here is All Along the Watchtower. This I really do not like. It sounds like that Devo cover of Satisfaction. I wonder what would persuade you that this was a good idea? John Leckie, a decade away from the Stone Roses, must surely have seen that this was a doomed exercise?

Neon Shuffle sticks its head above the 4 minute mark, which I guess is fine for the closing song on an album.