Pop is this.

It is the short, sharp shock, the crystal clear hook, the line, the melody, the rhythm, that snags, soothes then snares. Pop never lets us go. It is in the heart and the soul of four boys who come from a place that they call the middle of nowhere, all of them following a path that many have travelled before. Unashamed and unrelenting, they know how pop works, how it always yearns for the future, how it reaches for the heavens.

Fenech-Soler are a band who have overcome everything to be here, and have done so in their own way. They have honed and shined their sparkling songs, entirely by themselves, in their tiny bedrooms. They have taken their dreams to the disco and the Radio 1 playlist on their own terms. They even captivated legendary bands and DJs long before the record companies came knocking. Now signed to B-Unique, their debut album is here to lift and inspire us in the final days of summer, to spin its golden web of sound, to hold us in its glittering threads.

Pop began for Fenech-Soler in Kings Cliffe, a village of a thousand people in the hinterlands of Northamptonshire. It began with two brothers, Ben and Ross Duffy, who made music as teenagers with their friend Daniel Soler, whose surname would later play a bigger part in their lives. Their burgeoning love affairs with dance and club music – with The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk, Soulwax, and SMD – suddenly gained sharper edges and became fully-formed. They wrote electronic tracks together on their laptops and synthesisers, infusing them with the spirits of these artists they loved, but also other diverse artists like George Benson, N.E.R.D, R&B vocal group The Whispers, Michael Jackson and Queens Of The Stone Age. They aimed to write songs that would be club and festival anthems – songs that would have a crowd rising as one, singing their words back to them – with enough experimental edges to push them in new, bold directions.

From here, the boys brought in another friend, Andrew Lindsay, adding live drums and synths to the mix, and turning their music into living, breathing sound. As the sun broke through the clouds in the summer of 2008, Fenech-Soler was christened, were anointed, were born. Taking Daniel’s longer family surname as inspiration – also the name of a Maltese patriot who ruled the Catalans in the 18th century – they knew it could mean anything and everything. In its four shining syllables, a spirit of fantasy that the band all believed in, and the music they made could now shape the meaning of their name. Fenech-Soler summed up the essence of these four dear friends, working together at home, but reaching out into the world.

And then, as the music industry started to shatter around them, they put the pieces together in a new way. They played tiny clubs and sets to build up their live reputations, sending tracks to radio stations, certain that their music would hit a nerve. Word spread like wildfire. Legendary French DJ and remixer Alan Braxe, who scored an international hit with Stardust’s Music Sounds Better With You, fell in love with them, and asked to release one of their songs. The Cult Of Romance would be their first single and Radio 1’s Annie Mac, would feature the track on her 2009 compilation. Groove Armada saw the band at a Warehouse party, adored what they were doing and took them on tour. They even featured Ben as a lead vocalist on the single Paper Romance, placing him alongside stars like Bryan Ferry and Will Young on the new album Black Light. Then came the glowing press, and the clamour for the band to do remixes, with Marina and The Diamonds, Everything Everything, Example and Sunday Girl all wanting a shard of their brilliant light. In the spring of 2010 a new single Stop And Stare released on independent label Moda Music – and featured on Kitsune Vol.9 - would go all the way to the Radio 1 playlist, and the Top Ten of both the Dance and Indie singles charts.

But this didn’t swell the heads of these four young men. It merely proved to them that they could make a whole album in their own way, in their own mould. Now they knew that something recorded in a bedroom – full of spirit, excitement and emotional simplicity – was good enough for radio play, festival crowds and the dance music glitterati. It was good enough to turn heads, move feet, and pump hearts. The rules were theirs. They were new. Nothing would change. Pop was this.

Fenech-Soler’s album grew from this spirit, taking the band’s radio-friendly nous to unexpected places. Battlefields begins the album with a blast, launching with a heavenly chorus of voices, before shooting into stratospheres of glistening synths and dirty brass. Lies rises slowly from the deep, a tale of lust and paranoia that becomes a glittery explosion of foot-stomping melancholy. Golden Sun plays with rhythms that summon up the sultriness of desert heat; The Great Unknown takes a distant echo of French house in new, dizzying directions. And Stop And Stare is their club and festival anthem ready and waiting, full of twitchy, urgent riffs, and hands-to-the-air vitality. It is the sound of a band at the starting gate, ready to fire their gun.

Fenech-Soler are ready to take over your mind, turn the dial up on your radio, and beam the light of the sun to the dancefloor. Pop is this.

Support from DAVID E SUGAR