A huge pile of CD’s landed on my desk this morning and the decision of which one to listen to first is always a shallow one. Do I go with the name I saw on a sticker at the cash point? Do I opt for the shortest one? This time I went with the one with most appealing artwork. Like the days before Napster when you’d buy CD’s based on freakish artwork in the hopes that you’d find something interesting inside. I went with cardboard sleeve sporting a picture of an overweight suited man with a hole in his face.

The A side ‘Money’ starts with unbelievable promise but soon turns in to an utter mess with terrible falsetto and bad backing vocals. I almost wish the vocals were worse so it could at least pass as sarcastic. The most tuneful part of the song is executed with some good natured mouth trumpet “ba baaa bada ba bada baaaa!!” but takes such a departure from the song that you forget what the beginning of the song sounds like. The structure is incredibly sloppy too. It goes something like this: Intro, verse, pre-chorus type mess, verse, another pre-chorus then a bit of mouth trumpet which I assume is supposed to be a chorus before launching in to a three minute musical wankathon and falling apart at the end. The music and instrumentation is both powerful and catchy. Extremely well pulled off; it’s just a shame about the rest of it. Guys, if you need a nice quote for the press release, then maybe you could chop up that last sentence to change the context. I can see that working well.

Side B ‘Missus’ is a lush, down-tempo folky tune, sung with an honest voice and lovely arpeggios. It may not be a popular style at the moment but I think it holds more honest than ‘Money’ which frankly reeks of the zeitgeist. I’d suggest you go to their MySpace page and listen to the acoustic version which is far superior.

They only get 2 out of 5 because of the b-side. Without it, it would have been 1