1. Dandelion
2. Chinwag
3. Paperthin
4. Daytime Dilemma (Dangers of Love)

I loved Pickled Dick from the first time I heard them (which I think was supporting NOFX at a gig or something); such amazing harmonies and no-nonsense pop punk. Since their identity change to the more radio-friendly named Mike TV, they’ve not changed a great deal. Perhaps their songs are a little more mature in their subject matter (you can’t really write songs about pirates and jungle animals your whole life!), but only a touch; Mike TV are still as fun as ever with this release.

I suppose with this kind of power-pop-punk you can’t expect ‘progression’ and immense technicality, you’re just looking, essentially, for a good tune, catchy lyrics and a nice production for a shiny sound. This release certainly has all that with bells on, but for me doesn’t stand out as their best release, although I suspect the Stopgap E.P. might be a bit of a grower and i’ll soon learn to love the songs. This happened for me with Nerf Herder’s “How to Meet Girls” album, which I bought and thought it was kind of boring for a start, but now it’s pretty much one of my favourite ever albums. Without the benefit of foresight I can’t exactly predict if this will happen or not, but i’ll update this article if it does.

As it stands right now the tunes don’t seem quite as strong as their last album and the production isn’t quite as sharp, but from the title Stopgap E.P., I presume it’s just to tide us overr until they release another full-length.

Oh yes, the other benefit of this album is that it’s available for download with one of those fancy “pay whatever you want” schemes in mp3, ogg and it’s even available in lossless FLAC format so you can’t really go wrong.

I don’t think this release will suddenly gain Mike TV a whole new swathe of listeners, but for the fans – this is a really nice early Christmas present.

http://miketvmusic.bandcamp.com/