Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The upbeat and the sincere are not always keen bed fellows, they are the strands at polar opposites of their emotions to which logic and dreams have no business being together; and yet occasionally the dance throws them together, the sound too addictive to ignore, and when this sense of unforeseen love tangos in perfect unison, you can believe that they were both Raised by Engineers, and not by romantic poets.

The feeling of such union is rare, and it takes perhaps a mind steeped in the power pop production to see it come alive, the iron bridge that spans the river of the positive vibe does not get erected without concerns or without mishaps, and yet for It’s Karma It’s Cool the structural design is enough to see both sides celebrate a song that is open in its vocal optimism and its care for the subject matter at its heart.

Taken from the forthcoming mini album Hipsters and Aeroplanes, It’s Karma It’s Cool’s bubbly outlook should come as no surprise to those who have embraced the work of Jim Styring in the past, and as the song gets under the skin and flicks the switch of rampant buoyancy, there can be no mistaking exactly what the musician and this latest single in his armoury is striving for; a continuation, a return possibly, to a place where the single mattered as much as the album or the E.P. that was to follow in its wake.

This is not about pre-determination, instead it is a measure of the graft that the band are willing to pursue as they find ways to cross the bridge, not in the path of poets, but in the earnest, and often cheerful, way in which an engineer can bring two communities together.

A single that leads you to another place, one that is not held back by the thought of the excavation underneath, but instead to the promise of what the engineer can deliver next.

Ian D. Hall