I honestly thought I was going to detest this record like an itch I just couldn’t reach. Part of me deep down probably still does (I mean, come on. The stinking Caleigh Libertines? It would never get past the panel on Dragon’s Den). In spite of some fairly sweet singles, which showed willing and flowering potential, fleeting attendance at gigs of theirs saw little more than shapeless stabs at moving targets. They were a lurking anarchic act not realised, a belief that they were renegades on the fringes of mainstream culture not really warranted, they seemed undisciplined, unsatisfactory, reliant on arrogance. But Ian Gore’s taut production seems to have worked small wonders and from the moment ‘Six Queens’ cracks open like a wrecking ball at a high noon dance with a Pulp Fiction gang mentality (individual contributions still clear, assured and important) things look like they might turn out a lot better than expected.
They pitch themselves between a Doherty-like infant indie shambles (see the shabby plucking and quasi-rebellious poetry peppered throughout the anti-Labour ‘Downing Street Kindling’) and the uber-British creative liberalism and adventure of the Mystery Jets (see the eccentrically enunciated jangling Britpop of ‘Well, Love Does Furnish’), which is an opportunistic and timely combination at least. Of course they lack the genuinely untamed cross-eyed poet-laureate on the run from rehab danger that hauls rare moments of achievement out of Kate Moss’ boyfriend, and they don’t exactly have the intuitive gentlemanly pop-craftsmanship of the ‘Jets, but by and large they pull it off and hold court with what they’ve got confidently.
It is the singles we’ve already heard that shine brightest, that really embody the hedonism that they live for. Less immediately satisfying are ‘Meet Me By the Getaway Car’, a pork-pie hat take on The Police complete with actual unashamed guitar solo, and ‘On Sussex Downs’ which just sounds like a shoestring Kooks and is one of the least adventurous tracks on offer. But on ‘Edwould’ and ‘Happy As Annie’, eccentric hoe-downs of the roughest order led by Fagin’s gang, and compactly epic closer ‘On A Burning Coast’, something like a possessed marching band jousting with King Crimson and winning, there is much to get carried away by. They’ll never be ones to lead anyone anywhere. But as for providing a carefree relief sideshow, they’ve got that covered pretty nicely.