Thousand Yard Stare, The Shop Window – Academy 2, Islington

Back to see a band I’ve seen lots of – Thousand Yard Stare – and a band I’ve never seen before – The Shop Window.

Tonight’s show was the launch show for their recent album The Panglossian Momentum, which came out a couple of months after Covid hit, so I’d been waiting about 18 months for this one to be rescheduled. It was worth it.

Members of the Shop Window were active in the 1990s as part of Westpier, who I remember in name only from reading the NME and Melody Make religiously every week. They were signed to Indolent Records and therefore labelmates with Sleeper. They’ve recently formed a new unit and released a great debut album, The State Of Being Human, which harks back not to Britpop but to the jangle pop of the late 80s/early 90s, and an excellent job they do of it too.

Thousand Yard Stare just seem to get better with each headline gig I see – and both band and crowd seem to enjoy it more and more too, which can only bode well for the future.