77:78 - Jellies

The Guardian 80

Heavenly

If Aaron Fletcher and Tim Parkin had control of the weather, they couldn’t have timed the release of their first album as 77:78 any better: it’s a heatwave of a record, sunburned and slightly delirious. Any similarity to the Bees is not coincidental – Fletcher and Butler were among the Isle of Wight group’s multi-instrumentalists, and Butler one of its main songwriter. Jellies has that same sense of a group in thrall to beat-y 60s pop, but also pulling at the loose threads, so that what is left is not a homage but a record that flits around styles and decades, without ever losing its shape.

77:78 are perfectly happy to be straightforward – Compass Pass, with its pumping horns and clipped guitars, sounds not unlike Dodgy – and Jellies doesn’t require much excavation to reveal its pleasures. You get what the PR bumf is saying when it claims the album encompasses “the frayed beauty of the Beach Boys’ Smiley Smile, to the ramshackle dub of King Tubby via the playfulness of early Syd Barrett”, though that makes it sound rather more out there than it is. But there are unusual sonic touches – the way the deep harmonies in Pour It Out recall church singing; the combination of early 60s balladry and bleached psychedelia in ESTWD – that continually pique the interest. It’s like picking through a jumble sale and finding things one wasn’t aware one wanted, and ending up with a bag full of stuff to take home.