POCKETBOOKS
flight paths

pocketbooks, three northerners and two southerners based in london, remember when indie pop knew how to sparkle. when songs weren't afraid to be bright and uplifting, even if the subject matter was anything but. when bands adopted innocent sounding names like everything but the girl, the housemartins and the sundays, because they weren't skulking in the shadows of 'cool'. when indie pop reflected tiny moments in the suburbs rather than melodramatics in squats and dingy clubs. single 'footsteps' is classic indie pop through and through. set, in part, on 'the top deck of the 23' it sweeps from 'the supermarket aisles to the dancefloors of provincial towns' from 'the platforms of the central line to the beaches of a south coast town'. its protagonists aren't junkies or hustlers, but 'couples holding hands in the high street'. the kind of people, in other words, that indie pop seems to have forgotten recently.