Album Review: Dick Diver - Calendar Days

To their credit, 'success' hasn't spoiled Dick Diver. On album number two, their awkward conversations as they step over, around – and inevitably on – the cracks of relationships they seemed to have fallen into rather than sought, their insecure humanity remains. Like on the title track when the half-heard discussion could be taking place through the slightly fraying flyscreen, as one member of the share-household has to sit on the back step that leads to the yard, because there's still no smoking in the house, even when the topic is whether they're even going to be a couple tomorrow.

Much play is made of DD being some sort of Gen-Y Go-Betweens. And musically sometimes that's understandable, as guitars are tentatively picked at, and voices more run into each other than synchronise and harmonise. On The Two Year Lease, Al McKay and Steph Hughes' words actually try to step through the door together, before getting a bit like those Warner Bros cartoon squirrels insisting 'No, after you…' and leaving even more strained silences. But where The Go-B's thought because they read the right books, they might grow into a kind of cool, McKay and Ru Edwards are perhaps terminally suburban, and know it. The 'not that there's anything wrong with that' Boys, and the downbeat absurdity of Languages Of Love having some Custard-style self-deprecation to them.

Here and there, the music gets a bit bigger and more polished. Lime Green Shirt rings and shines. Blue & That has a saxophone wheeze as punctuation. Dick Diver do try, and sometimes miss – and maybe that's their charm.