Had the Black Kids’ frontman Reggie Youngblood persisted with either of his previous bands, he would be nearing the end of his first decade with a ska band called Honey Locust or his sixth year with a combo called Cubby, who apparently sounded like “Morrissey without the jokes”.

Instead, Britain has taken a sudden liking to Black Kids, and it has everything to do with the fact that Youngblood – a former teenage churchgoer from Jacksonville, Florida – loosened up enough to start again. By his own admission, he goes out clubbing now because he never did as a teenager. And, if the songs on their debut album are anything to go by, Youngblood is busy making up for lost time in other ways.

Apart from a couple of tunes that serve no greater purpose than to make up the numbers, Partie Traumatic is an indie album that won’t screw up the ambience if you stick it in the CD tray early on a Friday night.

For that much they can thank their producer, Bernard Butler. Having once been in Suede, Butler can ruefully tell a tale about penning tunes that struggled to transcend their indie limitations on the radio. By contrast, the sonic clarity of Partie Traumatic means that you get to hear what brilliant things some of Youngblood’s songs are about. Like Stuart Murdoch, who conceived Belle & Sebastian while laid low with ME, Youngblood’s delayed emergence into a teenage world means that these songs are heavy on the trials and trysts of a scene he has spent years observing.

Well, if I’ve Underestimated My Charm (Again) is anything to go by, not merely observing. Note, by the way, how the “(Again)” undoes the good work of the “Underestimated”. This one starts with a Sparks pun, “Like many a Mael, I get angst in my pants”, and ends in the realisation that charm won’t help him when the girl illicitly seeing him is holding down a proper relationship with the ogre that Youngblood just saw “downtown/ Placing bets on hounds”.

In recent interviews the singer has been mock-indignant that the first of his bands to feature his sister should have been the one to become famous, but on Listen to Your Body Tonight and Hurricane Jane, she’s key to all this – augmenting her brother’s Robert Smith yelp with a few injections from the Go-Gos helium canister.

It all comes together most effectively on the debut single I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend how to Dance With You – a reminder that, in any local indie scene, the dancefloor acts as a handy digest of who’s doing what with whom while so-and-so is nursing his wounds over that thing that thingy said to wotsit.

You suspect that some of these details may make it very difficult for Youngblood to go back to Jacksonville. But then, if he keeps on writing a few more like that, he won’t be having to do that for quite some time.

(Almost Gold, TMS £11.99, call 0845 6026328)

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