What’s the deal with bands just naming their albums after themselves these days? Did all their creativity go into making their incredible albums, thus leaving nothing for a catchy album title? In the case of Thömas Tantrum I genuinely don’t think that’s the case.

I will admit that my heart sank to the soles of my feet when I skimmed through the track listings and my eyes rested on the title ‘Trust Rhymes with Crust’. Good grief. I couldn’t deal with a title of such profound magnitude before my first coffee of the day, and as a result I put off listening to the album for as long as possible. When I finally did, my ears were attacked by the opener – ‘Rage Against The Tantrum’. After I’d recovered from the initial onslaught, I found myself quite enjoying the track.

The main problem with Thömas Tantrum is that the singer sounds like a pre-school television presenter – a horrifying combination of a patronising and almost completely tuneless tone of voice. This is a shame, because she really lets down her band, who are fantastic.

By far the most annoying track is ‘Why The English Are Rubbish’. In a bizarre attempt to compound the fact that allegedly the English are indeed ‘rubbish’, there are a few token French phrases – “zut alors!” – yelled into the microphone and a few “la de dahs” to follow it up. Zut alors indeed.

Therein lies another major problem with the band. It would appear that they do try to be profound and make some sort of statement with their songs – but the singer puts it across in such a terribly annoying fashion with a total lack of any apparent intellect that you actually can’t hear what’s going on. It’s painful.

If only they had another singer. Maybe another songwriter who can actually make whatever point the band is trying to make in a more articulate and eloquent fashion. Were those two changes put in place Thömas Tantrum would likely be a much better band than they are. In fact if the band just re-released the backing tracks as an album it would be a tremendous improvement.

Oddly enough, the strongest track is the final track ‘Pshandy’. Where the ‘P’ at the beginning comes from is anyone’s guess. It isn’t just the strongest track because it’s the final track, although knowing that the album is coming to a close is actually quite a blessed relief. But the track itself shows some very involved musical dexterity and, would you believe, at some points during the song, the singer does actually sing. In tune. Wonders, it seems, will never cease.

It’s not a terrible album. It’s just the “singing”. If I wanted to listen to an annoying squeaky-voiced female who couldn’t hold a note if her life depended on it, I would record an album myself.