Okay so I've now gone and given his album a couple more listens, following my initial surface listening. He's really good, a lot better than I initially gave him credit for and whilst he's not really doing much to push any boundary's, he's offering really catchy tunes, with sharp, foundational guitar play and some really witty colloquial writing, without coming across as a dickhead like someone such as Gerry Cinnamon.
His music itself gives me Killers vibes as well as bands like Nothing But Thieves - and whilst people are pigeonholing him somewhat with Indie Landfill like The Snuts, Blossoms etc, I think his writing sets him aside as a different beast - it's a very specific type of working class upbringing he's singing about, that will have familiarity to anyone from the North who grew up in poverty - Seventeen Going Under is quite exceptional in this way. Lyrically he's like a less-laddish early Arctic Monkeys in the way he writes about the working class experience for lads of a certain era. The stuff about his Ma and the DWP certainly hit a note with me.
So yeah, I was underplaying him a bit before as an enjoyable but throw away indie/rock/pop act with a 6/10 album. Upgrade it more to like an 8/8.5, he's smashed it.
