The packaging alone is worth a tenner. The fourteen blistering tracks should be in every English home. And the name INSTANT SPECIES should be spoken, often and far, wherever astringent pop songs are admired.
The tin itself (yes, a real tin, just like the picture) takes a few minutes to open for the first time. Be patient. Don't prise it with sharp or brutal instruments. Once yielded, the contents are revealed to include a paper insert of most helpful dosage directions. These are helpfully calibrated by age group. The troublesome 14 to 18s are advised to dissolve in cider and to mask any lingering unpleasantness with mints.
The music itself carries the essence of post-punk song-smithery, boiled and distilled to its most corrosive concentration. No song is much over two minutes: most are below. The sound explodes from track one and stops neither for breath nor apology. It gleams like a weapon. 10 years, 7 albums and a long working relationship with co-producer Carl Rosamund have accumulated levels of cunning and confidence that bury all dead ideas, banish all fillers and leave no cracks for papering. Every bar is needed and every note is used. Just sit back and hear them glint like blood-flecked sharks' teeth.
The subject matter is interpersonal, with a grudge or two. And here, the happily conjugal smilealots should back anxiously away. Rick Garnett, principal lyricist, could be taken for a serial misogynist if his general misanthropy weren't spread so evenly. But he does have issues, as the songs make very clear.
"Step Into the Mantrap" opens this side of Garnett's agenda at track one: "She's right, you're wrong, you're weak, she's strong" is a pretty fierce shrug of the lyrical shoulders, by no means resigned to the truth of the situation. In "Set Your Sights A Little Higher" the barbs are out to catch the proxy ambitiousness of parents colleagues, friends and neighbours. A "local girl" gets a walk-on part as the epitome of someone with less imagination than she needs. Someone similar might be in the frame in "Small Town Beauty Queen". INSTANT SPECIES sing: "You're the prettiest girl in the village so you move into the town". She fails to cope and "you move back to the village and you put on 20 pounds". Sharp enough to cut themselves.
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The conniving boss is another target, with sleazoid blackmail threatened in "You Might Like To Reconsider It". Garnett invents some compromising bedroom photographs: "It's amazing where you can hide your camera" he leers at his victim, who is being persuaded, it seems, to improve the quality of his decision making, disgruntled employee-wise.
"Beware Of Sarah" and "You Should Know What To Do" are two more of those suspect females, with designs and/or design flaws. "A Manager, A Lawyer And A Label" turns the interrogation light onto the failing eyes of the music industry, their "big plans for you" and their menacing "you will see our point f view" being 20-20 unwelcome. "This Is Where The Trouble Begins" could be another band-related song, pointing the finger of fate at those awkward moments when "girlfriends start moving in" and "friends start acting their age"
"Exception To The Rule" is a gentler song with a reflected regret. Along with "An Apology For Joanne" it ames clear that Garnett's pointed disappointment is even-handedly available as self-analysis.
"Two Faced" has a lovely guitar/organ intro. Musically it's my favourite by a mile. It would make a gem of a single
The final three songs stand apart, surrounded and linked with birdsong, as if they constituted their own bonsai concept album, "Into The Wild", "Call Of The Wild" and "Surfin' Dave"(with its heavyweight surf guitar noise and its unexplained reference to some local music legend) still carry the brief for brevity, but their hearts are freer and lighter.
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