If you don’t know who Pocket Satel­lite are, you’ve missed out. We reviewed their first EP here, and as you can see, we loved it.

We Chased Sol­diers was one of my favour­ite tracks on the Pho­to­graphs and Shells EP. It makes an appear­ance on this EP as well, and sounds sub­stan­tially the same. Maya’s incred­ible voice, the del­ic­ate gui­tar and soft piano are all still there. But this ver­sion sounds alto­gether more pol­ished. The pro­duc­tion is bet­ter, there are a few more bells and whistles, but the biggest dif­fer­ence is in the drum­ming. Almost inaud­ible in the first ver­sion, in the second, the drum­ming is faster, more urgent, and gives the track a much more mod­ern feel. This mod­ern­ity is a devel­op­ment that spans the whole record.

Their cover of Hot Chip’s Ready For The Floor was a pre­cursor to this devel­op­ment, show­ing an increased reli­ance on the drums as a driv­ing force. The split in terms of focus between this record and the pre­vi­ous is almost as big as the split between the last one and Maya & the Jumpstarts.

And that’s a good thing. Pocket Satel­lite have really grown as a band, and their cohe­sion is really evid­ent. The band are going from strength to strength, play­ing at Chesterfield’s Christ­mas lights turn-on, and gig­ging up and down the country.

If you visit http://pocketsatellite.co.uk/ you can down­load the Toy Train EP, Dis­ap­pear­ing Stars or both. It could be the best £5 you spend this year.