Okay. So you’ve discovered Mimas, probably through an existing affiliation through a Big Scary Monsters band/blogger/similar artist/whatever, and you probably have some sort of idea of what to expect: danceable, mathy, experimental-indie-art-rock, or something along those lines. And, to and extent, you’d probably be right.

Mimas are a quirky Danish quartet who, on their MySpace page, describe themselves as “a furry kitten: restless, picking fights and still lazy and patient at times.” If you too are struggling to imagine a restless-yet-lazy-yet-patient furry kitten, you’re not alone. But this description has more truth and depth to it than you might think.

Take ‘Application’, the first single from the record: at first, lazy with it’s awkward brass opening and yet then, we jump straight to a catchy hook and the softest (some would say furriest) hand-clapping. But suddenly, bam: “Sock puppetry may be rampant online / although not only in music videos but message boards, columns and blogs.” It all starts to melt in your mouth like the artificial flavoring of an ice lolly. It’s all very twee and playful and any song about blogging and sock puppetry is fun, right?

But the kitten has only just started playing. ‘La Moustache’ teases you with a ball of yarn or rather, a ball of contagious snare-thumps and hi-hats; ‘Sodapop’ christens you with a blissful, mathematical interpretation of how ‘the state tells you that they will stop stalking stalkers,’ or something along those lines. But it’s frontmanSnævar Njáll Albertsson’s vocals that bring everything together in this delightful, heartwarming Christmas-gift-wrapped delicious package. His lyrical themes of boredom, necessity, procrastination and reliance which lie underneath his adventurous metaphors will have something for everyone.

This LP is actually a really refreshing journey down a river of genres we’ve seen come and go: the stereotypical ‘Tesco’ indie rockers, the mathy-irregular-time-signature dance-punks, the twee-pop pioneers reminiscent of Architecture in Helsinki: Mimas take influences from left, right and Rhea (note: poor effort at an astronomy reference) and use their cunning hooks, perfect sense of rhythm, brass instrumentation and diverse percussion to create something that really is a lifejacket in today’s stream of generic indie rock.

Yes, Mimas are a restless-yet-patient-yet-lazy furry kitten, but they’re also so much more than that. Lifejackets is like listening to Modest Mouse’s The Moon & Antartica for the first time and getting that same grin that you got from Isaac’s yelps and cries and lyrical genius, of which Mimas have plenty.

It’s sometimes dreamy, sometimes catchy, and sometimes just downright weird – but Lifejackets is a credit to the BSM label and it’s a sign of this band, well, ‘growing up’ and finding their footwork, which they definitely display with confidence.