Album of the 'Week': 'Travels With Myself and Another'

I am divorced from current music. Not something to be proud of - music is consistently of value (except for the period between 1985-1988 or so it seems). In this year, I've become interested in one 'new' band, the charmingly named 'Future of the Left', and even they fall into a micro-genre that I'm inordinately interested in, that of 'Welsh Bands - Too Clever For Their Own Good'. It's a genre that includes FOTL (who acronym beautifully), Manic Street Preachers and Scritti Politti.

What is irresistible about these bands is that they're open to politics. While not polemical, their music is inflected by political history, or the idea of politics. An album that begins with a song entitled 'Arming Eritrea' is all too easy to enjoy. FOTL also share with Scritti Politti and the Manics an 'Americanism' - all sing in American accents, play with American forms of music and probably have portraits of George W. Bush on their walls for all I know. FOTL are not however, going to write songs about Jacques Derrida or empowering libraries. They're far too fun for that. Even though they practice a form of punk which is close to the avant-garde and to heavy metal (the irritatingly named 'hardcore'), their music is packed with melodies and jokes.

The perversely serious 'Drink Nike' begins with a description of a crap act of terrorism - "Right in the centre of Hove/Next to an escalator/Somebody's planted a bomb/Underneath a plastic chair" - mocking War on Terror paranoia or farcical homegrown terror plots. 'Stand By Your Manatee', not content with being titled with a crap joke, goes on to tell the story of a suicide motivated by the suicider's parents using plastic forks - ending with the sage observation that "it'll never be a kingdom shared". The harrowing 'Hope That House Built' takes the always enjoyable perspective of an evil ruling bastard, intoning "In the end/Everybody wins".

But what I really love about FOTL is what I love about reggae and calypso - the alliance of miserable or disturbing sentiment with gleeful music. The harmonies on 'Throwing Bricks at Trains', alone, make this my favourite album for a long while.