Coloured Vinyl LP (Limited to 500). Edinburgh quartet THE SPOOK SCHOOL bring together 13 (mostly) very noisy guitar pop songs, the album is the culmination of four people making a lot of noise about gender and about identity. Inspired by the post-punk-pop of THE BUZZCOCKS, LOU REED's "Transformer" and the films of Buster Keaton, with a dash of 60s pop for good measure, THE SPOOK SCHOOL are Nye Todd on guitar with Adam Todd also on guitar and Anna Cory on bass, not forgetting Niall McCamley who plays drums, tells jokes and takes his clothes off. They all sing and shout and write the music together. There is no leader and no frontperson. They're a band. With Nye identifying as trans, the band explore gender, sexuality and queer issues with stories that do not shy away from being absurd and silly. The title of the album is "Dress Up" and relates to the idea of gender being a social construction, something that can be artificially appropriated. Gender is something more fluid than the given binary of male/female. There is also a strength in dressing up, a liberation of mind and body, a chance to smile, be silly, be yourself, be someone else, be anything at least for a little while.