Edinburgh-based act The Occasional Flickers released their second album Home Is A Four-Letter Word back in November, but it’s only been, umm, today, that they’ve crossed my radar.

I say Edinburgh-based, as their facebook page describes them as being a pop band that began in Athens, Greece, but is now based in Edinburgh, Scotland (which is quite fitting, as Edinburgh is often described as the ‘Athens of the North’). Lead by Giorgos Bouras, the band are something of a collective, including Bart Owl of eagleowl, and indeed his bandmate Malcolm Benzie contributes to the album, too.

If this band remind me of any other act – and I mean this as a compliment – it’s probably Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci. Like that lamented act, this is a gorgeous pastoral album…and evokes a spirit far away from the harsh, dark Scottish winter that we’re currently enduring. That, of course, shouldn’t detract from the fact that the band are having an album launch this coming Friday (January 6) at the Third Door in Edinburgh, with support from the Second Hand Marching Band.

I wish I’d heard this album before now. Don’t make any excuses – just listen to it, realise how bloody great it is, and then go and buy it.

That’s an order.