Making the cast of Shameless look like clichéd cardboard cut-outs, this rag-tag Scouse quintet lure you into their dingy squat with the promise of some scuzzy blues and a singer who invokes the spirit of Howlin’ Wolf and Captain Beefheart.
It’s definitely worth hanging around for a couple of cans, tapping your feet to the opening Dirty Shame, a bedsit version of Brown Sugar with a home-brewed brass section loitering noisily on the landing.
Before long the lyrics start to exert their own intrigue. Are We Just Lovers laments how shagging always seems to get in the way of friendship. An Ode To Franz Biberkopf, inspired by the fictional small-time crook from the pages of Berlin Alexanderplatz, a 20s German novel, has you wondering who these scruffy bluesers really are.
By the time you get to Three Drop Jameson Mechanism, about a 1918 textbook on the principles of mechanism, you’re wondering if someone’s spiked your Special Brew, and stagger out to the New Orleans jazz mayhem of The Myth Of Willie McGrath. But you’ll be back.
