We moan and groan about the fact alt-country has become the genre where the talentless dwell because they are able to cover up their limitations with a banjo or a mandolin, and that too many bands are aping 1968, growing beards and wearing straw hats, but hell, sometimes it just works.

Real Ones come to us from Norway, and are arguably detached from the clichés we are used to, and thus take Crosby, Stills and Nash, America and the George Harrison side of the Beatles and, impossibly, inject life into it.

‘Everyone Feels Like Laughing’ and ‘Orlando’ take all the folk-rock conventions and fashion them into something highly listenable. Despite the fact they often veer perilously close to Spinal Tap’s ‘Listen To The Flower People’, there is only one disaster in the shape of ‘Disharmonic Ears’, where their use of the cheerful sitar crosses the line from playful to gratuitously pointless.

Otherwise, the uncomplicated optimism this record offers can be enjoyed by all but the most cynical ears.

Barnaby Smith