The ViewHats Off To The BuskersReview

After the festive deluge of greatest hits packages and critical ‘best of’ lists it’s out with the old, in with the new, and on to the ‘next big thing’. With two top 15 hits under their belt already, hotly-tipped Scottish upstarts The View look set to fill a very Kooks/Fratellis-shaped hole in 2007. Cocksure and confident, their energetic if somewhat artless debut does just enough to justify the hype.

Sharing a similarly hedonistic everyman swagger and a frankly less-than-imaginative name, the comparisons with early Oasis are inevitable. Big choruses and even bigger guitar solos abound, and Definitely Maybe producer Owen Morris is on hand to crisply capture the band’s wide-eyed vim and vigour.

The no-nonsense knees-ups of singles “Superstar Tradesman” and “‘Wasted Little DJs” hurtle by - the latter curiously redolent of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” - while “Don’t Tell Me” marries the jaunty bounce of “She’s Electric” with the defiant rebuke to responsibility of “Digsy’s Dinner”.

Elsewhere, a blossoming songwriting talent of greater distinction emerges and in Kyle Falconer The View boast a highly engaging narrator. The acoustic strum of “Face For The Radio” is sure to set a thousand teenage hearts a-quiver while the bittersweet jangle of “Streetlights” evokes vintage La’s: “I’d like to move city, I’d like to move town/’Cos all you ignorant people are bringing me down.”

Much like Arctic Monkeys this time last year, Hats Off To The Buskers finds a young working class band telling tall tales of Noughties life in a provincial British city. They may lack the punch and poeticism of their peers, but when they stop trying so hard The View have a robust charm all of their own.