There’s something oddly charming and endearing about this second long-player from the former Down The Tiny Steps man. Lo-fi and DIY it is, but the homespun feel doesn’t stop there. It’s almost as if the album is a mixtape or perhaps sweepings from the recording room floor – proper songs rub chromium oxide with snippets like ‘Guesty’ (all 24 seconds of it) while an ansafone message from Common’s mum asking him to pick up a flea-ridden per hedgehog also makes the final cut.
But when Mr C can be arsed playing the music biz game, it’s a bountiful listen. Vocally a weird cross of Aidan Moffat and King Creosote, the comparisons stop there, but ‘Shark’ – a seemingly live recording – has an earworm of a trilled theme to it.
As if to show this is no ordinary release, ‘Legal Tender’ is genuinely horrible, unpleasantly sleazy 70s lounge music and vocoder but that aside there’s much to impress here.
Pride of place goes to ‘Crumbs’, a curious paean to a childhood spent in Fife (or Perthshire or wherever), but with odd references to gladiators, almost a history lesson at, if not quite a subatomic level, at least delivered with a peculiar insouciance.
In all it’s a fun listen, at least to these ears. You owe it to yourself to hear this album. Who knows, you might just be converted.