I’m going to say some stuff early in this review that will make you slam your laptop lid shut or fling your mobile phone out of the nearest open window.

Or should I say… if I was the one reading this review and not writing it, I’d probably do some untold damage to my precious mechanical devices so I didn’t have to read any further because… gentle reader… there are a couple of musical touchstones I’m about to reference that may chill your very soul. But then you may not have the same profound music prejudices as I do. Chiefly Gallagher related Britpop and the modern appropriation of classic psychedelic pop.

So yeah, Cullen Omori, former lead singer of the now-defunct Smith Westerns, has released a debut album which contains many similar hallmarks of Foxygen’s hippyish wistfulness and Oasis’s unpaid debt to late-period The Beatles.

I know “fucking run” right?

But before we ALL get our collective panties in a bunch, this is as bad as the comparison gets, because unlike those artists above, Cullen Omori has managed to take the best elements from each of their respective influences to create something beautiful, refreshingly catchy and surprisingly focused.

Album opener ‘No Big Deal’ is a self-effacing introduction, full of humble musings on Omori’s own very minor failings (“my nose is always running”) but this is offset majestically with a sweeping Mercury Rev-style grandiosity, that puts these foibles on a universal platform. ‘Two Kinds of Love’ is equally charming, with it’s 60s girl group sweetness and Spector-esque production.

Although New Misery is a hazy, dreamlike affair, there’s a driving melody through every track that stops the album from becoming a navel-indulging bore-fest suitable only for a single Summer serving. Check out the relentlessly upbeat ‘Hey Girl’ (which has the subtlest hint of Britpop about it) or the moody, 80s tinged ‘Sour Silk’ which is the closest a modern psychedelic album has come to a decent ‘driving at night in the rain’ song.

In fact ‘Sour Silk’ would be my favourite thing on the album if it wasn’t for ‘Cinnamon’, a track that should be given unreserved amounts of praise for taking elements of Ariel Pink, The Cure and Culture Club and not only creating something that’s remarkably not shit, but something I can imagine losing my mind to in a club.

And maybe that’s Cullen Omori’s greatest strength. Taking the disparate parts from genres and artists he clearly adores and fusing them together to make something utterly accessible and captivating. New Misery is a sweet, blissful experience. In fact this ‘new misery’ makes regular old happiness look like crap. Does that make sense? Fuck it, listen to this album, it’s lovely.

Check out all the latest music releases in our new album reviews section, including Underworld’s Barbara, Barbara we face a shining future.