At the moment, I’m reading Tom Holland’s “Millennium”, which concerns itself with the history of Europe from the Dark Ages through the millennium (at 1000AD, not the one nine years ago). One of the fascinating little nuggets of information that he’s so good at peppering his books with was about the Viking invasion and settlement of northern England. Apparently, despite our perception that the Vikings were a smelly, rampaging horde of barbarians, they bathed once a week, wore eyeliner and took a lot of care over their hair. This, of course, made them rather popular with the local ladies, and so Englishmen befriended them to get make-up and hair-care tips! Now, I bet you never thought that Vikings were in fact a bunch of poodle-rockers.

And on that note, following on from my recent posts about Mew and Mixtapes and Cellmates, here’s another bunch of Scandinavians, who are rampaging over the North Sea carrying Fender Jazzmasters and copies of My Bloody Valentine’s “Loveless”. Whether they are going to run off with our ladies too is purely open to conjecture.

Aerial have the same effortless tunefulness that their compatriots deal in, and I’m really starting to wonder what’s going on over there. “All Refrain” is but two minutes long, brings to mind Pavement and Guided By Voices and Beulah and is a good two minutes too short. It’s from their new LP “Put It This Way In Headlines” (which is up there in the “Not quite understandable” stakes with “You Forgot It In People”) which is out right now.

Bloody hell, it’s a good song. Not sure about the Liverpool mug in the video though.

MP3: All Refrain by Aerial

Buy the album from the Nomethod online shop or from iTunes (no Amazon links for this one, I’m afraid).