You might not have heard of Cody. Partly because they seem until recently to have been slightly confused about what they themselves were - on the basis of one apparently unrepresentative song ('August Song') they were briefly hyped as the new hope of Oxford, despite not really living in Oxford and nobody evidently having listened to the song very hard; it's about dictatorship, but was briefly optioned by American Express for a smugly corporate film ad.

Until recently I wasn't sure who they were either. Always intriguing, they'd never quite seemed to click, the first album floating around my stereo for a while making little lunges but turning out to be quite hard to sit down and listen to. It's ambient, it's experimental, it drifts, it sighs, and generally insinuates into your consciousness directly, bypassing the ears. The singles had a little more assertiveness melodically, but still...

Anyway, that's all changed now; 'Uplift' is pretty much chemically addictive and trips along perkily, the lightness of the untreated vocals for once fitting in perfectly. This had always been a sticking point before: somehow it always sounded as though the singer had wandered in at the last minute to mutter about... whatever it is he mutters about... without being able to blend into the lush instrumentals. In fact, in this single, it's the relentless backing vocals that really make it musically - tying the whole thing together, pushing it around and generally refusing to fade into the background as some of their previous offerings did. It proves, thankfully, that you can experiment intelligently without sacrificing the excitement of the whole thing. And, come to that, that feeling can survive remote electronic transmission - how much more modern can you get?

That part might not be relevant.

(For the wary, you can hear a clip of 'Uplift' here - although for a cumulative track like this one it's actually not terribly helpful; which is why you should opt for the full version with the pretty laminated sleeve - it's also quite handy for keeping your Travelcard in.)