The first line of the biography that the PR firm behind the Young Pretorians sent with “State Actors” probably wasn’t meant to make me laugh, but nonetheless, we are where we are: “You become an adult, you get that crappy job that you swore would only be temporary.” It said.

Now, in all candour, I like my job, but on 24th July 2007 I didn’t. In fact I told everyone that would listen that night that “I wouldn’t be there long.” Well, guess where I still am. So yeah, cheers.

Which leads me on to the main thrust of this. There’s a quote from Pete Darwent – the singer with YP (who aren’t from Pretoria at all, nor, to be honest, do they look all that young, and as Homer Simpson so memorably observed, “I hate when people lie to us through song”…..) where he was asked about this record and simply says: “We just want to write songs we would listen to ourselves.” And I am down with that, no problem.

That’s the reason I have never particularly liked Kiss. There’s always the suspicion that they don’t like music at all, never mind their own. Not here. These five glorious songs reek – positively – of a band that loves what they do.

“Desperation Party Scene” is enough to suck you in. Indeed, if you aren’t singing “you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you’ve heard that lie before” on the first verse, then you might want to skip the rest of this.

The cleverness of this is exactly that: it is clever. “No One Is The Saint They Want To Be” chugs along like prime Jimmy Eat World, but scratch the surface and there are layers here. Likewise the single “Average Conversations, Between Average People” is slower, more deliberate, but when Darwent sings “you always said you’d live and die for the scene, I still don’t know what the fuck that means” it’s impossible not to imagine a Hold Steady track.

Indeed, although this an English band, they clearly listen to a lot of US music. “You Look The Same” is like Pkewx3 jamming with Gaslight Anthem (for clarity, that makes it very good indeed) while the guitar tone that James Marsh finds throughout is perfect for the band, but never more so than on “The Shakes”.

They might struggle with the whole Gaslight Anthem conundrum of “are they punk? Are they the second coming of Springsteen?” but you know what? If you care about such things, you’re wrong. Young Pretorians are a brilliant band to watch explode in coming years, if there’s any justice. And that, really, is all that matters.

Rating 9/10