It’s not as if I need any coaxing to enjoy a Great Cynics album, but from the moment I heard the crisp guitar intro on “Let Me Go Home” I knew that the band’s fourth album was going to hit the mark like its predecessors. Recorded as a duo following the departure of bassist Iona Cairns to concentrate on her own band, Posi is as equally upbeat as previous releases with Giles Bidder’s ability to make anything in his daily life sound cheerful. Only once does he veer off that optimistic course. It’s on “Don’t Buy the Sun,” with Bidder letting rip against the hideous right-wing tabloid newspaper so reviled here in the U.K. I must admit I do miss Cairns’s vocals but this is still an enjoyable album jam packed with earworms. –Rich Cocksedge (Specialist Subject, in[email protected], specialistsubjectrecords.com)