The erstwhile Adverts singer is in fine fettle here, with powerful lyrics prominent throughout. Musically it’s more than decent. Weak Glue rocks out, a polished punk fizzer detailing the painful New Orleans flood and using it as an allegory for a wider world problem of selfishness. Butted up against that with the same sense of hapless loss is the more introspective title track that manages to somehow sound like a Spaghetti Western’s end credit theme as written, worryingly, by The Scorpions. Throughout the material follows various thematic paths: the power of unity, the horrors of consumerism and environmental impacts of the same, and a constant need for the individual to fight back, find their voice and mobilise. This is not a heavy-going album by any means, the music is tight and the songs snap along with catchiness injected into every riff: a protest record that reveals a raging flame within its creator, but a progressive one. Open Up Your Heart and closer My Trojan Horse are more than testament to the eyes through which TV Smith has come to peep, those eyes now windows to a soul that believes in a better way.
