On the Horizon: Towns' Day Dawning.

We've been prattling on about Towns for yonkers now. A Weston-super-Mare quartet tied to the soul and shoegaze of the '90s, the woozy Heads Off featured in our Tracks of 2011 rundown and to tear at the loose threads of the already well-worn cliché, with influential (or at least big) heads starting to turn this couldn't be happening to a more amiable crew. Produced by Owen Morris (he who once was behind the knobs of (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, 1977, A Northern Soul and so on and so forth), Gone Are The Days is irrefutably their punchiest, gutsiest, and most intoxicating effort yet, Jon-Paul Beaumont's trademark hurricanes of processed guitar swirling like hypnotic goo blended into a brain-numbing sundae.

With the interweb currently maddening over reunions Mancunian or otherwise (if largely otherwise), it's revitalising to find copious energy, email and kilobyte channeling Rob Heppell's constellation-centric video to the track. Shot in London periphery, it looks as though it could just as well have been captured on the faraway outskirts of the Milky Way, joining the dots between Danny Perez visuals and Windows 95 screensaver.


Towns swing by London to play Camden's Barfly alongside Outfit on January 23rd. For tickets and more info, here's your customary link.