Even the band email address – [email protected] – is just out of time. This release, which sees the Glasgow six-piece’s 10th year in showbiz, has a title which may not be as throwaway as you might expect, what with the band’s reputation as a slightly comedic act. Rather than nostalgia for the 00s (geddit?), the band may well be feeling nostalgia IN the noughties. See?
The band back up this theory with the format – ‘sides’ 1 and 2, separated on the CD (is there a vinyl version available?) with the comforting sound of surface nose separating tracks ‘The Day My Baby Said She Hated Ska’ (or at least the rather neat dub interlude that follows it) and ‘This Is The Story Of My Self-Pity’ which opens the flip.
There’s 15 tunes here, each pretty much short and to the point – in the best traditions of classic songwriting.
And the band ‘borrow’ from various styles and genres to achieve this self-imposed task. The opener ‘Drink Yourself Sober’, appropriately, is in that twilight zone where pub rock became punk, with a ska breakdown thrown in as a bonus. In fact, there’s a decided feel of the Amphetameanies about this album, not because it’s ska all the way by any means, but because half the time the ‘meanies don’t really play ska.
The good thing about this album is that with every track the least you get either a classic tune – ‘Lonely Old Man’, which is essentially The Best of The Pogues compressed into 3 minutes – or surreal comedy that nods to the band’s connections with ‘”Scottish Half Man Half Biscuit” the Hector Collectors, as on ‘I’m Bi Polar Baby’.
Or you get both – ‘Seaquest Dependent Pleasure Cortex’ is 90 seconds of straight-down-the-middle new wave with sax that the E Street Band would have done overtime for.
Overall, it’s hard to fault this, and if it gets you looking out your Specials and Dr Feelgood albums then that’s a bonus. Here’s to the next 10 years of the Plimptons.
