Jim is someone I've been seeing a lot on my Instagram lately; and whilst I've been doing my best to stay off my phone, it is situations where I find myself listening to musicians around me that just get it. What it's supposed to be and that, in my opinion, is sounding a bit like Pavement. Thank you Instagram for delivering this music to me on such an inconvenient and bloated platform.

I’ve met Jim a few times, or at least I thought I had. Occasionally I saw Clitspit/Elwell/Fetsoc Lucas around the Conservatoire and a section of those times with a blondish full-haired companion. That turned out to be his twin brother, Ted and because I'm a self-absorbed prick, I am forever forgetting names. I realised this when I stepped into the house, shocked to see Jim had shaved his head and applied hooks to his eyebrow. I was even more shocked when his body double with his regular hair and glasses walked in from the back garden. That, in fact, was Jim.

In Jim’s living room are Clem and Lucas, however they had nothing to do with this recording session, they were just playing Skyrim again or something. I was Tom and Max from Pharmacie who materialised from the garden in front of Jim and Ted who I'd quietly mistaken for Jim just seconds before who were going to commit to tape today. The inaccessible / inescapable gulag in the corner was where we somehow positioned Ted, behind his drum kit. A clean and clangy snare paired with a crisp and clicky kick isn't my usual mode of transport, but paired with the one AT2020 crotch mic, it gave us clarity where we needed it and allowed us to lean off the cymbals for the guitars to take over.

Tom accompanied Ted with a similarly clean bass part to glue the rhythm and guitars together. Love that bass run going into the second chorus. One of the last times I saw Tom was in London, probably 12 pints deep after the gig we played together, so it was nice to see him a little more abstinent. Because we wanted to record 2 vocal parts we needed to record them next. A tricky feat with no guitar to go by, but went for something a little Ty Segall with Jim’s vocals, less audible, gritty and delayed. Reminded me a bit of J Mascis vocally too - lots of Dinosaur Jr. influence on this.

Tom and Max on the backing vocals through the telephone mic! It's bloody tricky doing harmonies, especially when there's no guitars to go by, but didn’t they do a great job? I love the ‘ooh a ooh ooh’s in the guitar solo. I think it was at this point we went to a tiny corner shop in headingley to get some essentials (is it a Contact Buzz session if a snack trip isn’t involved?). We got back to start loading in guitars to the 2 tracks that were left. Max first, but not without playing around with Jim’s new Boss SY-300 Synthesizer pedal. What a gorgeous pedal this was, it crunched Max’s guitar into a fine Gameboy soundtrack tone, or a tamagotchi. So nostalgic. Too many great riffs to point out.

And then came Jim to top it all off, doubling the amount of lovely Synthesized riffs. It was getting late and call me an empath, I was thinking of the neighbours, 90% of our guitar time was spent marvelling at that pedal, but it was all worth it in the end, Jim’s solo the thing to take this tune into the riffy stratosphere on his Fender Meteora (you thought i was gonna say Stratocaster then, didn’t you?). Overall I'd put this tune in the same exciting category as Second Born - I Answer and Pharmacie - Val Kilmer, fast paced post-hardcore goodness with a hint of Power Pop. My favourite! Not much like Pavement at all as it turned out, but thats the diversity any good band needs. They can mellow you out with a slow number and then shake you awake with a punky banger. A 9pm finish, but all in a good evenings work.

For fans of: Pavement, Dinosaur Jr. and Pinegrove.