Circulus - Clocks Are Like People (2006)

Cult live attraction Circulus do not parody - the original is beyond parody - but pastiche the kind of band that, around 1971, grafted the instrumentation of half-timbered Merrie Englande onto politely finicky soft rock. Think Amazing Blondel, Magna Carta and Gryphon among those codpieced consorts who, if they weren't swept from the circuit by punk, survived to play before a shrinking audience of bearded fetishists. On their second album, Michael Tyack's south London septet offer a full measure of capering foolery, starry-eyed but po-faced faerie whimsy, stretches of undeniable prettiness, and frighteningly authentic synthesizer wibbling of the kind in which ye olde rockers with a brand new hire-purchase Minimoog were virtuoso. The spectral folk of Wherever She Goes aside, it's not enough, the whole enterprise feeling too arch, too calculated to bewitch.