Hometown: Wakefield.
The lineup: Matt Abbott (vocals), David Gledhill (music, production).
The background: You know those such-and-such meets so-and-so collisions of opposites that music writers love to employ? Here's a secret: they're often far-fetched or represent wishful thinking on the part of the journalist. But not this time. Skint & Demoralised, a duo comprising former standup performance poet turned rap-narrator Matt Abbott and Sheffield producer/musician David Gledhill aka MiNI dOG, couldn't be more the Streets-meets-Arctic Monkeys-with-Mark Ronson-at-the-controls if they tried. They combine mainly spoken songs about everyday situations and the ups and downs of teen romance, whose wordiness is reflected by their long titles – This Song Is Definitely Not About You, Only Lust Ignores Violence Involving Ambulances, You Probably Don't Even Realise When You Do The Things I Love the Most – with chiming Smiths-ish guitars, fuzzy but frisky Arctics basslines and quasi-Northern Soul arrangements.
None of this is surprising, given what was fed into the S&D computer. Nineteen-year-old Wakefield boy Abbott's favourite band of all time are the Smiths, his favourite lyric ever is Morrissey's There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, his favourite band of recent times are the Arctic Monkeys, and famous soul session troupe the Dap Kings (used by producer Ronson for Amy Winehouse's Back to Black and his own album Version) have provided the musical backup (including glockenspiels, organs, strings and brass) for Skint & Demoralised's forthcoming single This Song Is Definitely Not About You and debut album Love and Other Catastrophes, the latter recorded at The Daptone Studios in Brooklyn, NY.
He's yet to namecheck Mike Skinner, pointedly, which is ironic because the first question that comes to mind when you hear S&D's low-rent tales of dating and fighting, red lipstick and snogging between mouthfuls of fish and chips down by the seaside, is: how come the Streets have recorded a follow-up album so swiftly after Everything Is Borrowed, and with Al Green's backing band from the 1970s to boot? Abbott and his daft-alias studio sidekick, who only released their first single, The Thrill of Thirty Seconds, last November, have come up with a series of uncannily memorable, chirpy, cheeky, loveable sensitive-geezer soul-rap ditties for those who believe that, at 33, Just Jack is just too old to convince as a poet-ruffian, who wish Alex Turner would speak not croak, or who long for a British Eminem only without the psychopathic, homicidal tendencies.
The buzz: "Latter-day Northern Soul meets zeitgeist poetry from a Yorkshire teenager who shows ace potential."
The truth: We say "uncannily memorable", but for many S&D's tunes will just as likely be irritatingly infectious.
Most likely to: Rhyme "closer" with "knows her" and "gist" with "pissed".
Least likely to: Curry favour with Just Jack, although he probably favours curry.
What to buy: This Song Is Definitely Not About You is released by Mercury on 16 February, followed by the album Love and Other Catastrophes in May.
File next to: The Streets, Arctic Monkeys, Just Jack, Squeeze.
Links: www.myspace.com/skintanddemoralised
Tomorrow's new band: Kardinal Offishall.
