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The Hot Damn! — Dancing On The Milky Way (Fat Earth Records)

How difficult is it to write catchy pop rock anthems bursting with smile-on-your-face bombast?

Damn easy, as it happens.

Hot Damn! easy.

For more than three years the kaleidoscopic faces of the burgeoning NWOCR movement have been rolling out banger after banger.

The quartet’s live shows are like some kind of life-affirming rock and roll therapy session.

And it’s impossible not to get caught up in a contagious, cult-like explosion of colour and cool as fuck craziness.

But what do you do when the night’s finally over? 

There’s nothing like a Hot Damn! comedown. We know.

And we’ve lost count of the number of times we’ve come in from a gig and dreamt of sliding into the back of the sofa — clutching a can of fridge fresh Irn Bru and wearing nothing more than a tie dye bobble hat — before slapping on a full album’s worth of Hot Damn! classics.

As of today, that dream can come true.

Dancing On The Milky Way’s been a long time coming. A fucking long time.

But they say good things come to those who wait.

And the record we’ve been waiting for all year is so good it’s like finding a massive piece of KFC in your bargain bucket that’s all greasy skin and no meat. That good.

The Hot Damn! explode

Dance Around has been around almost as long as rock itself.

But it’s long been a boogie-tastic barometer for what would become The Hot Damn!’s dazzling full-length debut.

From day one Gill Montgomery (The Amorettes), Josie O’Toole (Tequila Mockingbyrd), Laurie Buchanan (Aaron Buchanan and the Cult Classics) and Lzi Hayes (New Device/Sophie Lloyd band) have revealed a happy knack for bashing out killer tunes.

And it’s no exaggeration to say that every song here smashes pop rock out of the park.

Imagine Stock, Aitken and Waterman getting hold of The Go-Go’s back in the day.

Or Mutt Lange persuading Madonna he was the man to produce her chart-busting early work.

From one to 12 this is instantly hummable NWOCR gold.

Jukebox On The Radio, I Didn’t Like You Anyway and Automatic are insufferably catchy.

Try doing anything productive after listening to that triumvirate of lobe-tickling earworms on repeat.

Montgomery’s tone seamlessly veers from playful to piercing as she recounts tale after tale of life on planet Hot Damn! — About Last Night and Sticky Clubs are like CBeebies Bedtime Stories for grown-ups: cautionary tales packed with laugh out loud lines.

And here’s the thing about Dancing On The Milky Way.

It never tries to be too serious but it’s seriously good.

Good enough to be our Record Of The Year? Well, it’s only September but…