Officer Kicks named their second album after the amount of money the band scraped together to fund its recording. Six grand is a lot of money, that is, of course, until the end of the year when the collapse of western markets and hyper inflation means you’ll be lucky to get change out of that for a loaf of white. In such times the band may half been better off with a two grand crocked plan and sticking the best of the inconsistent results on an EP.

There is nothing technically wrong with this effort, just in the same way that there’s really nothing wrong with your bank-draining loaf; it’s edible and yet at the same time bland and the same as every other you’ve eaten before. There are some half decent throbbing bass-lines, competent drumming and a few hooks here and there, but these high points are ideas that have been flogged to death for the best part of a decade. The up-tempo opener ‘Dirty Sally’ and the sparse guitar melody of ‘Love Your Man’ are two cases in point. The low points veer on pure dross. ‘Dog Day Rush’ is an uninspired commentary on the joys of commuting and a negative bank balance. It’s almost an extended musical metaphor that works too well; you can really relate to the sense of banality, monotony and despair.

Indie-rock and pop are slowly becoming by-words for mindless bollocks, -which is a shame because there are some truly great bands out there at the moment producing fantastic records; see, for example, efforts by Das Pop and Late Of The Pier. This album follows along the lines of the homogenous formula, churned out by the likes of Polythene-era Feeder and Mansun, and continued to this day by The Enemy and The Rifles: half-heartedly throwing together a load of tired insipid ideas. Save those hard earned pennies for something else.