Portugal 2021 - Miguel Marôco - Girassol

 (Click here if your iDevice doesn't show the video screen above…)

Back in the nineties I was in a noisy little indie punk band called the Cesspit Rebels. For some reason we never entirely fathomed we were beloved of a strange sub-cult of indie called Twee Pop, and ended up on loads of cassette compilations featuring all this lovely floaty indie jangle, with our horrible noise bunged smack in the middle. I'm telling you this because Miguel Marôco's song here sounds exactly like the kind of song that was always on directly before us.

It's proper old school bedroom indie of a sort that never entirely pierced the mainstream - apart from that brief weird moment when White Town bagged an international number one. There's jangles, there's plinky plonks, and the song even appears to be about flowers - at least in some figurative manner.

Miguel himself seems to have the same kind of homespun do-it-yourself charm too, if you seek him out on YouTube. I can't see this doing very much business at all at Festival da Canção, as it's just a little too awkward compared to all the more slick and centred others. But it's most certainly one of the ones we're most looking forward to seeing performed live. Right then, it's given me an urge to go listen to Stereolab and The Field Mice again…