The Afternoons' The Days We Found in the Sun is a goodbye kiss of a record; simultaneously elegaic and optimistic, and wrapped up in the sweetest pop music this side of Pet Sounds. Choruses soar, harmonies swoon, the stars turn, lovers leave things unsaid. Each musical twist, each lyrical turn sticks in your head, in your heart for days. A Change in Season is the Mams and Papas meets Belle and Sebastian. Calico shares the sighing pop sensibilities of fellow countrymen Super Furry Animals. Saturday Afternoon is a lovely vignette that could have come from the pen of vintage Ray Davies. Just when you think this album has given you everything you've always looked for in a record, Saturn fades out to the most gorgeous refrain of the year. Sung falteringly by a girls choir (I can hear you through the darkness), it's quite a moment, and very Afternoons: sad, beautiful and, somehow, heart-breakingly optimistic. Falling is easy\u002FFlying is hard, they sing on Falling is Easy, a pop symphony of the kind Bryan Wilson last wrote when colour TV was a novelty. Somehow the Afternoons make it seem effortless.