It’s all well and good commending an artist or an album for exploring, reaching out for new ideas, providing something fresh. This is something all music writers and music fans alike should look to act on. But such a habit often leads us to overlooking a band that re-invents the wheel; tackling a dated sound and giving it a fresh pair of legs.

You can only assume that the Smith Westerns have grown up with their parents’ records, revelled in them and when coming together as a young, exuberant band, modelled their own sound on the artists they’ve aged with. The 80s and 90s are all encompassed within the band’s second full-length, and first since being signed to new Domino sister label Weird World. It’s a fairly drastic departure from the scuzzy, at times indecipherable but ultimately charming eponymous debut. The budget’s been raised, as has the standard.

The reason why many in America have leapt upon Dye It Blonde with open arms, instead of dismissing it as a casual reciting of Bowie-era glam-rock and early Britpop is because of the record’s opening seconds: ‘Weekend”s piercing guitars are begging to be noticed, the mantra of “weekends are never fun, unless you’re around here too-oooh” preying on being sung-along to. Nothing quite reaches the heady heights of this album opener, but it’s a good job the band command your attention from the very off.

“The world is lovely when you are wrong” is a lyric that helps summarise the general feel of the rest of the record. We’re given an insight into the life of a bone-idle bunch of kids who revel in the heat of the summer, drenched in beer, obsessed by certain girls; they take advantage of being young and care-free, with apt knowledge that it won’t last forever. The Smith Westerns are still frighteningly young for a band plugging these sort of intelligent, knowledgeable homages to Teenage Fanclub, Pulp and other bands of these decades. The influences of psychedelia and glam all help to emphasise the drugged-up irresponsibility that the trio hope to channel.

Its early May UK release seems a smart move: If we’d received this record at the heart of snowfall and grey misery, at the time when it was released in the US, early January, we simply wouldn’t be able to relate to it. But now the bank holiday weekends are coming in twos, now that it’s acceptable to start sipping beer at Midday, we’re given something of a soundtrack, the kind of soundtrack that Suede, Elton John and in particularly, David Bowie, helped to produce during their tenure. The Smith Westerns can say with certainty and pride: “Mission accomplished”.