I’ve been listening to one thing, and one thing only over the past week. On mega-repeat. “I think I’ve found our new favourite band,” I said to Jenny after picking her up at the airport on Monday. “You’ll love this.” I pressed play on the iPod, attached as it is by a curly wire to a malfunctioning car stereo, and we sailed down the M4, me singing along at the top of my voice, Jenny slumped in the passenger seat experiencing a mixture of jetlag and mild contempt for the music I was forcing her to listen to.

“It sounds like a song at the end of Not The Nine O’Clock News, or something,” she said. “I mean, the lyrics are quite funny, I guess, but really, what’s the point?” “The point,” I pointed out, pointedly, “is the music. Listen. It’s like Steely Dan, but from Ealing. They’ve perfectly captured the essence of the Dan, the Doobies, Hall & Oates, everything I love – in fact, everything you love, too, it’s partly your fault that I’m into this kind of thing, remember.”

I thought back to the previous week, where I’d listened to the album for the first time. Wistful, shifting piano chords, followed by two men singing very earnestly in unison:

Motorbikes everywhere
A plastic container full of children’s hair
Wolf with a message of joy
Fourteen kinds of curtains
How will it end?

And I’m almost ashamed to say that when they hit the chorus, it made a big bit of snot flew out of my nose.

Cheese dreams, these are cheese dreams we have…

The thing is, Talc aren’t that funny, but that’s fine, because they’re not trying that hard to be funny. I hate combinations of music and comedy. I hate the aforementioned closing musical numbers on comedy sketch shows. When Bill Bailey is doing his oompah-keyboard versions of TV theme tunes I’m horribly embarrassed; people think that kind of thing is incredibly clever, but actually it’s piss-easy. What isn’t easy is building heart-lifting minor 9th chords on a Fender Rhodes while singing:

Bobby Fame, Bobby Fame,
What’s in a name?
Bobby Fame, Bobby Fame,
C’mon, let’s get famous!

“That’s awful,” said Jenny, laughing. “It’s terrible.” But there’s something to be said for criticising something while giggling, don’t you think? If you have even a marginal tolerance for smooth rock, do check out Talc. Their album, “Sit Down Think”, is up on iTunes, and they play the Jazz Café on 19th October, which I’m hoping to go to, but it’s Jenny’s birthday, so it may be an uphill struggle.