Smokey Bastard
Album: Tales From The Wasteland
Label: Bomber
Tracks: 11
Website: www.smokeybastard.com

Right, before we do anything else, let's get this out of the way - Smokey Bastard have a lot in common with The Pogues in that they have a fine grasp of traditional music from around the British Isles and chose to chuck it out there at hundred miles per hour. The biggest difference though is that whereas The Pogues could now fairly be considered a heritage band with a proud legacy and countless past glories, Smokey Bastard are a going concern, making new friends and pushing the music further with every new release.

And while we're considering shared DNA, let's also drop the names of the Men They Couldn't Hang, The Levellers, Bellowhead and the Dropkick Murphys. You get the picture.

Anyway, back to the task in hand. Smokey Bastard's second album, Tales from the Wasteland, is born of a well-established punk tradition of outsider music that taps into Britain's history of sedition and protest to raise a standard for the disaffected, dispossessed and those who chose to disassociate themselves from the recognisable mainstream.

Crucially though these songs are not polemics for an alternative way of life, but act as reports from the frontline of love, life and everything in between. There's profanity, tenderness, eloquence and bluntness - often within a verse of two of the same song. Boatepitaph is an epic story of what might have been, the delicate vocal harmonies of My Son John pluck at the heartstrings, Token Folkin' displays a fine sense of self and Yuppie Dracula is aimed as squarely at the power-chasing liberals as it is the radicals' traditional enemies.

At its best it's a powerful blast of folk and fury, but it also knows how to party and the album closes with a rip-snortin' take on Mamma Mia. Now, pass the cider and merry be…

Nick Churchill