When disenchantment runs high, when city life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be — when you’re forking out seven quid for a pint, shivering in a queue for a club night you don’t really care about, getting ripped off by landlords over blu tac stains, and squeezing in studio sessions around a relentless 9-5 schedule, there is only one logical response: fun. 

That’s exactly what Home Counties provide on their debut album, Exactly As It Seems. A newly-purchased synthesiser, a fresh outlook, and a steady diet of early 2000s pop kicked open a world of melodic possibility for the band, resulting in an album that’s upbeat from start to finish: swapping wry social commentary for personal experience and big tunes.

Produced in its entirety by the band’s guitarist Conor Kearney, and mixed by the renowned Andy Savours (Black Country New Road, Róisín Murphy, The Kills) – the album dutifully captures the band’s rapturous live performances; a fizzing display of eclecticism all with a focus on melody in its purest form.

Thematically, the album traverses the ups and downs of London life in your late twenties; laments on renting and how rubbish landlords are on the Gang of Four/Devo-indebted “You Break It, You Bought It”, turning 25 and not wanting to go clubbing anymore on the agitated indie-disco of “Uptight”, and fear of social isolation in old-age on the shapeshifting art-rock of “Wild Guess”. 

Home Counties always manage to balance the duality of lyrical frankness and musical buoyancy 

with gusto. With an eye for the day-to-day, all-too-relatable details of crap modern living, yet – coupled with an ear for hook-filled, grin-inducing melodies – the pay-off is one riddled in joy rather than despair.