When Team Waterpolo uploaded the first demo of Letting Go to MySpace shortly after forming late last year, they couldn’t really have expected the explosion of interest it brought to their Lancashire doorsteps almost overnight. With their fortunes and prospects bolstered after becoming a buzz word amongst NME readers the Preston four piece quickly secured the help of the Moshi Moshi Records and released the track as their first single to rave reviews, back in February of this year. The big labels duly took note and the follow up has had to wait eight months to see the light of day, whilst the band thrashed out a deal with Sony’s Epic Records that would allow them to make good on an old promise to release a single via the achingly independent Yo Yo Acapulco label.

Team Waterpolo are a band that thrive on the juxtapositions of their varied stylistic influences and So Called Summer is an almost perfect example of that swirling maelstrom of sound. Lyrically traveling the familiarly nostalgic “nothing-to-do-but-make-music” road, Team Water Polo forgo the angular inide sound which so often accompanies such sentiment these days. Instead we’re treated to deep, synth heavy atmospheric verses that sound like Jaime T got together with Death In Vegas to re-write I Am The Walrus.

Fifty seconds in however, the brooding build up is deliciously whipped from under your feet and replaced with a chorus so insanely, bouncabley upbeat, and so starkly contrasting to what has gone before that it can’t fail to stir up some kind of response. Whether you respond by breaking out into a full on jitterbug, celebrating the next Friendly Fires or pulling your own hair out tuft by tuft, cursing the next Scouting For Girls, may depend entirely on the mood you’re in when you hear it.

If you were undecided by Letting Go, this interesting if not entirely ground-breaking follow up will probably make up your mind about Team Waterpolo one way or the other.

Expect an album release in early 2009.

Reviewed by Winston’s Zen for AltSounds