Back when Miley was just a teen who happened to have a great selection of bootcut jeans, a bunch of real pop provocateurs existed. Arriving like space cadets from the future, they didn't need to reach for the interrobang, they embodied it. They were Late of the Pier.

Emerging back in the mid 2000s, Zarcorp Demo in tow and probably wearing at least one gold cape, they were a technicolour sore thumb, chewing up genre divides for breakfast and spitting them out with the giddy confidence of a group that knew that one day, the rest of the world would catch up. Sadly, the world never did, and they haven’t released anything in six years.

It occurred to me that somewhere back in Castle Donington the band may be walking around, working in bars, referring to themselves as “Andrew” and “Ross”, excitement coming in the form of a nice dinner. It made me weep a peyote-laced, kaleidoscopic tear for what once was and what could be now. Late of the Pier need to come back and be that missing link between genres. Be Disclosure with guitars. Be Peace trapped in a Korg. Now is the time.

Seven years on and "Space And The Woods" still sounds as fucking insane as it did then. It hasn’t dated because I have a sneaking suspicion it might have been plucked from the year 3016. At the time, they were described as “music to have asthma to”. Last time I checked, alt-J were described as “quite nice”. WELP :’(

Then came Fantasy Black Channel, an album that didn’t so much beat to its own drum, as beat to its own Moog played backwards through a pan pipe and then played out through one of those lollipops that also functions as a whistle. Maybe it helped that the album dropped roughly around the period where you could open your post and find a bank statement, gas bill, and a massive bag of mephedrone. But, even without that little aid, every note of that album would have sounded utterly spangled.

And now? The most technicolour thing that you can hope for is if one of CHVRCHES accidently fell in a pool of radioactive waste. So, I'm writing to Late of the Pier here, in an open letter, to urge them to return from whichever rabbit hole they've been hiding from and start making music again. Not because I'm a massive fan (obviously I am!), but also because I've a sneaking suspicion we're only one Jake Bugg away from the point of music being borified until it all sounds as mundane as The National. So, here goes...

We need you to bring the character and the oddity and the unexpected back. We need more albums that suddenly chime in with madcap laughs or someone going, “Can you smell snacks?” We need more… well, we probably just need more and I can’t think of any people better to provide it.

Fantasy Black Channel was the most brilliantly weird album of the 2000s and now is the perfect timing to make its brilliantly weird successor. The peers you were loosely equated with are either hitting career peaks (Metronomy) or re-emerging with a new-found surge of life (Klaxons), so what better time to come back and show everyone how it’s done? Do a Bowie and just casually pop something on the internet, watch the retweets roll in like Rick Ross watches his bank balance roll up. Do an Arcade Fire and throw something out under a pseudonym (I think everyone would work it out pretty quick). Stand in the middle of the street and Busk Like You're Really Going To Change Someone's Life. Do whatever you want, because let’s face it – it’s never going to be boring. But let’s hope you do something, because as tempting as it must be to serve up one brain-melting album and then disappear, the music world would be a far more ridiculous place with you back in it. And a little bit of ridiculous is exactly what we need.

Yours truly,

Lisa ‘Lafayette Howlin’ Thunder Esq.’ Wright

xx