The man in his pants on the front cover of their EP nearly put me off (at least being French, he should have been in his pants with a Gauloises languidly hanging from his mouth. If we’re going to be stereotypical, let’s go the whole hog!).

CONCRETE KNIVES are almost utterly un-French though: they sound like they have been mainlining UK/US indie music for months. It probably started with a single hit of the Black Kids, and the habit just got worse.

And yet, this is an utterly joyous little thing: a five track EP which I mention because a) it’s finally out in this country today and b) they play dates this week in London/Reading/Bristol/Brighton and Southampton.

Now that Los Campesinos are busy exploring their darker side, CK waltz right in, without a care in the world; they even have a song which effortlessly conjures up the confusion of teen fashion (and it’s called ‘Youth Compass’ which someone like The Sunday Times will rip off and use for the title of its next Hipsters column).

On another more miserable day, this would be fantastically annoying in its chirpiness – especially as the EP’s ‘Brand New Start’ sounds like its trying to goad Vampire Weekend out of their second-album stupor – but hang it all. I like the irony (that something so disposable-sounding might just be worth cherishing).

I hope they’re good live. They look like they should be, given the video below. But only Tuesday night will tell.

Concrete Knives – Happy Mondays @ Chorus 2011 from Boheman on Vimeo.

As Bob Dylan once sang: “I can’t help it, if you might think I’m odd. Loving you not for what you are, but for what you’re not.”

Thus, VARIOUS CRUELTIES are the epitome of ‘Not’.

They are not electro! Not retro-Britpop (the next big thing?). Not in the Tipsters Polls. And not in east London! They are tied up in Nots.

Tonight though, in a surprisingly Sold Out 100 Club (even the band seem a little shocked; they thank us for coming a lot. “If it wasn’t for you, well, it would be….a rehearsal”) they are rich and warm and characteristically understated.

Singer Liam O’Donnell has something of the Jarvis Cocker about him, an eye for drudgery chic (“This stage is a bit long”) and an ear for melody, his unpretentious Yorkshire speaking voice giving away in the songs to a sort of malleable ‘80s alt-pop croon.

They have grown apace since I first saw them last year at The Bull & Gate and then our Going Deaf night at Camden Crawl. They seem more at ease, unhurried to the point where you sometimes wonder whether this is a rehearsal.

Yet this is Not one of those London shows where you suspect a band is simply going through the motions, begrudgingly paying their dues; impatiently waiting for the Big Break. This is a kind of craftsmanship, steadily beginning to shine.

Already confident enough to dispense with current single ‘The Great Unknown’ and the slowly sashaying, twangy ode to a goddess ‘If It Wasn’t For You’ relatively early, they explore some of the other tracks from their forthcoming debut album, due in the Spring (the smouldering, atmospheric ‘Magnetic Fields’ is another stand-out).

It is Not (again) going to be easy for them in this climate, but as I wander toward the door, during the final song ‘Chemicals’, I have something approaching a glow in my stomach.

And is Not the vodka.

Various Cruelties: bloody dry ice!

We get so much music these days that I sometimes wonder if we have stopped really listening to it.

It flashes past like rolling news; all car crashes, lust, gossip and filler. You stop taking in it after a while. Records/bands come and go without context (heaven help the groups who posses a sense of mystery, because we’re not listening long enough to solve it).

It’s all surface noise. We only listen to the point of hearing what we want to hear (what we’ve been told hear?) and then move on.

In this era of the half-listen, the new ALT-J single ‘Matilda’ arrived a couple of days ago and it sounded, well, pretty enough. It wasn’t a disappointment. It classically filled a moment.

Which is where I’ve been going wrong: several plays later, after listening again (really listening), this is a magical record. It makes you want to replay it (to really listen to it).

It is spell binding in its simplicity and sensitivity (enough that you want to be alone with it; to spend three and a half minutes away from the blather and nonsense). There is hardly anything going on, yet what is there – the little rolling rhythm, swept along by a warm, shiny guitar and that rich, fragile vocal….all this sounds gorgeous.

It is so quiet in a way, but the space/near-silence is deafening; the little details – that dramatic bass drum sound just before the break – giving it added texture.

If I could, I’d go round to their next rehearsal and shake their hands one by one.

You can hear it here. Or get it on I-Tunes now.