Sometimes you buy records on spec without knowing anything about them except you thought you remember someone said they were pretty good. There's always the chance that you'll get a turkey, but other times the mythical pleasant surprise manifests itself. So it is with Life Without Buildings. I still have absolutely no idea where this lot come from, since fake accents abound in indie-pop, but that scarcely matters because this is pretty damned good.

It's a simple formula - indie girl sings mostly nonsense over standard indie band backing, but the execution is the key, Sue Tompkins delivering what seems melodic ranting consisting of phrases, disconnected words and syllables and little whoops and glottal stops that seems like string of consciousness but structured enough to work with the band, acting as another weird instrument along the guitar bass drums setup. The lyrics, as one'd imagine, don't make a real lot of sense - just when you think you've worked it out as something intelligible to do with getting the heck out of this podunk town or bootywhang or that, Sue toodles off on another weird tangent, but eventually bringing it back to home.

It's one of those albums where the pace doesn't alter too much until the closer "Sorrow", but the arrangements are diverse enough and the band skilled enough to pull them off. The structure means that might be in the background for most of the time, but they're certainly not slack or sloppy about it, and indeed, the lack of wankerdom contrasts nicely with the action out front. Particular favourites of mine include "PS Exclusive" which has all the charge of a first coffee, "The Leanover", and "New Town".