Spinning Coin - Permo

The Guardian 80

(Geographic/Domino)

It’s no surprise that this debut from Glaswegian quintet Spinning Coin is released on the Pastels’ Geographic imprint: this is indie music from its bowl haircuts to its dirty Converses. The two songwriters in the band have their different strengths. Jack Mellin draws more from the spikier end of things, with Tin sounding like a slightly less ramshackle Josef K song, while Sean Armstrong tends towards the more straightforwardly melancholic end of indie – Money for Breakfast sounds very much as if it could have come from the Pastels’ first album. It’s not simply the sound of Scotland in the first half of the 1980s, though – Permo is also filtered through the gauzy, dreamy indie of the US in the early 90s. Yet it’s very much an album out of time, music made out of love, rather than in pursuit of a trend. You need a high tolerance for wispiness, but it’s hard to deny the loveliness of a song such as Floating Like You.