The union of two 90s musical maestros could be either genius or disastrous – on the one hand erupting into clashes of each trying to outdo the other or otherwise welding the individual elements of both frontman’s craft to create something special. Fortunately with Jonny, the brainchild of Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s Euros Childs, the collaboration is a harmonious one, and one that highlights both musicians’ distinct styles to create an altogether different, yet timeless debut.

However Jonny is an album that requires repeated listens for these subtle attributes to be appreciated. Album opener ‘Wich Is Wich’ is the 70s personified and on first listen you’d be forgiven for thinking that Status Quo also had a hand in the album’s production, its classic rock n’ roll guitar licks and repetitive titular lines sung in unison not unlike those of the boogie rockers. Yet, the opener aside, the decision to soak the songs in 60s and 70s nostalgia is a welcome one, the guitars often crash and slide into psychedelic Byrds-esque territory and the luscious melting harmonies often evoke that of Rubber Soul era Beatles, particularly on ‘English Lady’ and ‘Waiting Around For You’. The album is retrospective certainly, but the electric synthesisers and minimalist keyboards and organs update their sound and keep Jonny’s production thoroughly modern throughout.

This is not the first time that the duo have worked together, as Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci’s seventh album How I Long To Feel That Summer In My Heart featured Blake on occasional vocal duties. On Jonny’s eponymous debut it is once again Childs who takes the reins with most of the lead vocals and the majority of the song writing, his playful lyrics and the vaguely psychedelic touches of Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci encircling the songs. With their dream-like and often enigmatic lyrics, Jonny evoke slices of sunshine pop effortlessly and the pair’s simple, yet wonderfully melodic harmonies are a platform from which Jonny can accentuate their light-hearted lyrics. Lines such as “Candyfloss and baby blue eyes/ I’ve seen her fly and she’s the queen of the skies” are coated with shameless sentimentality, whereas there is also the inclusion of more cryptic lines in songs such as ‘Cave Dance’ where the duo sing of “Going ding dong crazy like a prehistoric clown.” Incidentally ‘Cave Dance’ is a standout track, not least for its unusual length of almost 11 minutes. Yet within this time frame only two minutes are dedicated to any cohesive song formation, whereas the remaining time is filtered into an extended outro where repetitive lines of “Do the cave dance my darling” are layered over drifts into different genres of the folky-krautrock and electronica persuasion, all washed over with echoes of electronic drone and distortion.

With the drastic exception of ‘Cave Dance’ Jonny is an amalgamation of 13 tracks that predominantly rest around the two-minute mark. Often these songs are slightly different segments of eras past, each showcasing a variance in style, or indeed subject matter. Take ‘Bread’ for example – the duo’s ode to bread making. “He rolls the dough so lovingly / Right round the granary / Hats off for those who make bread” is sung in Childs’ falsetto voice, while a chorus softly sing “Bread” in the background and a Baroque-style keyboard ditty surrounds the proceedings. It’s frankly bizarre, yet somehow fits in with the rest of the album in both tone and style. Likewise ‘I’ll Make Her My Best Friend’ and its banjo lines and wistful lyrics about returning to the country wouldn’t be out of place in an American country-folk album. This could come across as disjointed, but instead this is Jonny’s strength, and the band’s ability to seamlessly segue between genres and styles, yet bring it all together with an air of eras past whilst looking completely ahead is to their credit.

Jonny round off their album with the beautiful, piano-laden closer ‘Never Alone’. It is the perfect way to end, its stripped back nature displaying both men’s vocals together on this acoustic duet, neither of them overshadowing the other. Devoid of the psychedelia and playfulness of the rest of the album, one is left with just under two minutes to reflect on the dual prospect of Jonny. While the album may require its listeners to spend some time trying to understand Jonny’s music and appreciate their pairing, after a few listens it is suddenly apparent that Childs and Blake have, as expected, managed to create a largely wonderful album. Although a couple of the tracks are a little too drenched in 60s guitar pop, and its 13-track playlist perhaps a little too long, the majority of the album showcases a successful collaboration between two established musicians whose voices and styles complement each other enormously and when paired together are capable of creating a completely modern merge of music from across an expansion of eras.