While there’s truth in the Microdisney maxim – Cathan Coughlan and Sean O’Hagan as yin and yang, Coughlan’s acerbic lyrics shielded by O’Hagan’s lovely, sophisticated pop writing – on their debut album, Everything Is Fantastic, Microdisney find their feet with songs that aren’t so much ‘light and shade’ as simple complexity. If you’re expecting the lushness and range of O’Hagan’s subsequent material with The High Llamas, you might feel a bit short-changed at first – stick with it, though, as you can hear the lustrous loveliness in his writing simmering underneath eighties production mores and Coughlan’s rich, rounded tenor voice. Coughlan’s lyrics alternate between world-weary, bruised, and quietly furious, their simmering anger perhaps the only hangover from Microdisney’s early, punk-informed days, shadowing Cork’s Nun Attax. Smart writing, with a sting in its tail.