B-Side Sunday.

In this troubled world with its uncertain future, where you either hold ’em or fold ’em as the masses of sold souls hurl themselves, goggle-eyed and credit-cards wedged between every outstretched finger, into the fresh hell of another Xmas, it’s comforting to know that B-Side Sunday is there to soothe your furrowed brow and lift you above the season’s cloyingly chartbound sounds with another forgotten slice of ‘Side Two’ magic plucked from pop’s shiniest jewellery box. We would have picked an Xmas-y tune for the last B-Side Sunday before old Saint Nick goes about his business, but we are better than that and far less tawdrily predicable. So are you.

Timeless like a broken watch, B-Side Sunday stands as a God to the Godless in these irreligious last days, a Sabbath ceremony so naggingly addictive that you would gladly hock your granny down the knackers yard for just one more solitary second in the sanctifying light of its polysyllabic style and blue-sky outlook. Smoother than James Brown covered in babyoil and more wholesome than a truckload of brown bread; alongside doing its damnedest to get you a +1 with St. Peter at Heaven’s Gate, it’s here to cater for all your cheapest thrills with its swoony rushes of giddy bliss. And in accordance with those gabbled ideas, here comes ‘Patiently’ by Rilo Kiley – B-side from the rather lovely ‘It’s A Hit’ release.

Featuring the sugar-sweet sonorance of Jenny Lewis, who boasts a voice so effortlessly beatific it makes Bjork sound like a 60-a-day fishwife clearing her throat, the band push on with an heads-down indie bluster that somehow manages to come together to form much more than the sum of its parts. All in all, it’s more mischevously marvellous than an afternoon spent goosing Cat Deeley and, like losing your virginity, it’s a pleasurably sticky mess that’s over far too quickly.

So despite all the turkey and incoming relatives, enjoy December’s dregs while they last. ‘Cos next to a circus there ain’t nothing that packs up and tears out faster than the Xmas spirit. Amen.