As an increasingly homogenised pop landscape reaches peak Sheeran, this collaboration between part of the Fat White Family and Sheffield electronic oddballs Eccentronic Research Council adopts a gleefully untamed, bull-in-a-record-shop approach. It’s an inspired mish-mash of Glitter Band tribal drumming, a howling wolf, tuneless saxophone squawking, heavy breathing and at least one narrative about castration; a sort of Cramps-meet-B-52s Hammer horror-rock monster. Guests range from a wailing Yoko Ono to the cowboy from the Village People (on schlock stomper Glory Hole). It should be an unholy mess, but songs as diverse as The Strangle of Anna (an outsider ballad sung by Slow Club’s Rebecca Taylor), Black Hanz (motorik electro psych) and I.D.S. (about Iain Duncan Smith, with the chorus “40,000 years of Job Club”) are held together by really sharp songwriting, and laden with pop hooks. There will be more considered and crafted albums released this year, but few that are so much fun.
