Musical compartmentalisation is of course a bad thing more often than not, but it's increasingly an exercise in chasing one's own tail trying to work out where Slow Club fit in. They're not really twee, or indie, or folk, or anti-folk, or acoustic roots, but you can see how the confusion might have arisen. Charles Watson and Rebecca Taylor's harmonies and summery faux-ramshackle approach is one that doesn't reach out for approval or, despite the album title, smug superiority but suggests in an implicit, low-key fashion that people discover them under their own steam. Which, with more than a couple of years' worth of singles and well placed support slots behind them, seems to be working out fine.The sound of Yeah, So? bears that gameplan out. Although the sound the pair make often clatters its way through in its enthralled excitement it never over-reaches itself. Like former tourmates Tilly And The Wall there seems a lot going on amid the gang shouts and unorthodox percussion but listen closer and it turns out everything has its place without resorting to overcrowding. This may be as much a reaction against what has been around them in their native Sheffield of late - some background research reveals the pair's previous band The Lonely Hearts sounded like Bromhead's Jacket - but the intuitive nature of how the vocals and rhythms play off against each other and the charmly captivating nature of their deceptively basic approach.In fact, apart from hidden track 'Boys On Their Birthdays' which sounds like a lost out-take from Emmy The Great's album, right down to the slow emotional build and cultural references, it's not the current British 'nu-folk' brigade that much of the album chiefly brings to mind. Opening track 'When I Go' is a fine example: while comparisons between a male/female duo and the White Stripes are logically uncalled for there's echoes of the acoustic moments on White Blood Cells (think 'We're Going To Be Friends') in the simplicity of the guitar structure and direct sentiments, while there's also a certain resemblance to the Everly Brothers in the simple vocal harmonies and country inflected guitar vibrato.Throughout there's the sense that Slow Club are less a project based on a long term gameplan and more an opportunity for two friends to have fun while writing songs built on genuine emotion and human connection. 'Because We're Dead' runs on a rockabilly/skiffle shuffle that often seems to be hanging on for dear life but succeeds through broad joyfulness. 'Giving Up On Love' and 'Trophy Room' borrow the celebrated Johnny Cash rhythm and turns it towards the jangly dark side, while 'It Doesn’t Have To Be Beautiful' hides tear-stained lyrical matter to a frenetic shifting country-punk hoedown a la latter day Mekons, providing in its coda the first of only two appearances of the massed overdub vocal army that's showed up on a couple of their previous singles.So Slow Club can do the frantic stuff, but they prove more than adequately that alongside that they can pull off a fragile back porch ballad. While titles like 'There Is No Good Way To Say I'm Leaving You' aren't leaving a lot to the imagination, they're where the sparseness of the set-up and the directly simple feelings expressed heighten the bruised emotions. In taking time over their craft they've clearly learnt when to let go and when to keep that desire as contained away from sappiness as possible. 'Come On Youth' shimmers and builds towards a clarion call for the hopeful, while 'I Was Unconscious, It Was A Dream' introduces a distorted electric guitar that somehow manages not to disrupt the tambourine rhythm and harmonies. The sadness inherent seems expressed as real enough, and not in the wantonly lachrymose sense of most broken heart exhumers. In the middle the pair feel confident enough to take a solo song each, Charles' 'Dance 'Til The Morning Light' reflective and raw like early Bright Eyes, Rebecca's 'Sorry About The Doom' as straightforwardly folky and singer-songwriterly as they've ever got.But for all their capabilities of variation, Slow Club's strength is that they sound spontaneous and celebratory about the act of being able to make music itself, the very thing that drives a successful debut album before the pressures to maintain that level kick in. There's a lightness of touch and sweetness of mood even when the lyrics don't seem to demand it. Slow Club may not belong to any one genre comfortably but they know exactly what they are, and even when they don't want to be all-out acoustic rock'n'roll they're pleasingly enthusiastic and naturally infectious enough for it not to matter. 83%Slow Club on Myspace