The First Book Of Lessons Popical Island****

What's great about Dublin band Yeh Deadlies – which comprises various members of the capital's Popical Island collective, a crack brainstorm unit designed to nudge the heads of underground sounds over the parapet – is that they are unashamedly in love with pop tunes. You can tell this from the off, when tracks such as The Present Perfect, Magazineand Best Man Speechare delivered with all the ease and authority of a band at peace with the odder and often gentler elements of 1977-1978 punk rock.

Never mind that Yeh Deadlies’ music is occasionally naive, ragged, scuzzy, fuzzy and snotty (that’s not necessarily a bad thing). Rather, you have to admire their skills at gathering together on one debut album songs from various eras of guitar-driven great pop.

Ultimately, it's all about the genius of stealing, and applying and portraying the swag in ways that interest, intrigue and excite. And it's all about that here; there is little profound to be discovered in the lyrics, save occasional references to religion and society, love and marriage, and the saving grace of pop. Mention is made of "the frottage industry" ( Disc Jockey Blues), but beyond that anything pertaining to doing, or thinking of, the nasty is sublimated to the rhythms of the music.

The First Book of Lessons(the cover of which is like an original Penguin paperback defaced by a second-year schoolkid anarchist – all that's missing is a "Boyzone suck" scrawl) is an object lesson in how to let peer group pressure dissolve like the filling of a Malteser under duress from a tongue. That its main musical thrust is in thrall to what sounds like the line-up of a show in London's 100 Club circa 1978 (Young Marble Giants, X-Ray Spex, Subway Sect, Wreckless Eric) is only one of its many strengths.

The primary achievement of this very fine debut album, however, is one that so many bands fail to comprehend, let alone attain: the blending of talent and skill with charisma and charm. See popical island.tumblr.com

Download tracks: The Present Perfect, Learning Chinese