It all comes down to what you want from your bands in the end. They are out there, those misanthropic four-pieces, rehearsing in the Utility rooms of Daddy's carpet ladened mansion, making utterly original music. Smashing wine bottles, setting fire to violins, and chanting "Death, Death" into a feedback drenched microphone. Onto the demo tape it all goes. If you want completely original, boundary breaking music, then you go to windswept record fairs and hunt out that demo tape. It'll only be 50p. For the rest of us, let us enjoy Ricky in peace.

Ricky like The Byrds, CSN&Y, The Beatles, and The Beach Boys. When they play their songs, they sound like these aforementioned bands. But when they play these harmony-drenched, melody ladened songs, they sound terrific.

They've got, like Oasis did, that bizarre knack of writing original songs that sound like you've heard them a million times before. They engrain themselves on your brain, and etch away at your conscience. They've got, as Simon Cowell would say, the 'x-factor'.

On the remarkably emotional opener, "Mise-En-Scene", Ricky ponder the life of lead Beach Boy Brian Wilson, and we get a real sense of the tragic life which Wilson led (and to a point still leads). No mean feat for a bunch of working-class scummy kids from Portsmouth.

"Maybe Together is an obvious stand-out. It shows that Ricky are acutely aware of their 'retro shit' reputation. And then turn it into a great song. "You can fight all you want - you’ve got your point of view But we’ll only take that and use it as a cue" they declare, almost starting war on narrow-minded critics, who begrudge their very existence. Ricky aren’t blinkered fools trying to believe it’s 1967. They simply don’t conform to the bourgeois modern music ethics which have dogged the British Music Industry in recent years.

These are simple, uncomplicated, summer songs. In "Morning Sunshine", they seem to capture the very essence of summer in a way not achieved since The Kinks "Sunny Afternoon". You can almost feel the warm sun on your neck, the cool breeze ruffle your hair. Shame it's being released in January.

Ricky write catchy, sun-drenched, life-affirming pop songs, with socially-aware, thought provoking and intelligent lyrics. A new year, another top teen pop sensation.