Montreal band TOPS claim to be drawing inspiration from the late sixties – the trippy hedonism of Midnight Cowboy – but instead, to my ears, the new album feels more like the characters from a Paul Thomas Anderson film got together and made music. There’s a dead-eyed coldness to the production, like the cynical teens from the abhorrent Licorice Pizza, or the dysfunctional family dynamics explored through Boogie Nights. Essentially, it’s a nihilistic slide through shiny AOR-inspired FM radio. It’s inconsistent, much like PTA’s oeuvre, but with some great moments. ‘Falling On My Sword’ is one such song, where the seventies and eighties collide in a hooky, likeable pop song which shows a love of much maligned artists like Hall and Oates and 10CC; unfashionable they may be, but certain bits proved they had a way of cutting through the naffness associated with the soft rock genre.

This is both a blessing and curse. In isolation, some tracks are charming (‘Stars Come After You’, ‘Wheels At Night’, ‘Chlorine’) with twinkling, neon keyboards from Marta Cikojevic underpinning the ache of wasted youth, but elsewhere (‘Outstanding In The Rain’, ‘Paper House’, ‘Annihilation’) there’s a cloying sensation, not helped by Jane Penny’s sweet, half-whispered vocals which can feel too sentimental within the context of a full album. Such is the problem with nostalgia-invoking music – sometimes, it’s best to cut bait and flee, never to return. TOPS’ revisionist rock only works well in certain settings, like retro threads.