You almost certainly don’t know the name, and that’s okay – let’s forget image and whatnot and just talk about the music.

Live, I was electrified. So I tuned into the MySpace tracks and was… horrified! By then the album was already ordered. Thankfully, it does sound much better on CD! However, I don’t think I’ve every tried so hard to get into an album. I like the songs, sometimes for the ‘tune’, sometimes the lyrics are Currie-brilliant, and yet… What I really dislike about this album is the over-production. Live, it was guitar and keyboard, drums and bass. Here – harps?! Effing bloody saxophones?!

I’ve almost overcome those pointless pitfalls – the songs really are very good, and I wanted to listen despite my hackles rising at the damn saxamaphone. Love is not a many-splendoured thing for this ‘Weegie wordsmith, but full of poison and thorns. I like! Never is JC so spot on than when the bitter vengence creeps into his voice. If I ever loved you, shouldn’t I be crying? – definitely the song to send after the break up! There is something eerie as hell in Where Did I Go? (I like to hurt you / without you ever knowing) with minor chords that send shivers down my spine – I love the picture it paints, one I can almost grasp! Keep listening, soon I shall understand!

It’s not all gloom. The tone stays pretty melancholic, but there’s something realistically sweet in You and me / Were never meant to be together / But you took off your dress / And something in that mess got changed forever

Alas, saxophones aside (really, if an album ever screamed for an acoustic version…!), there are still a few weak moments. The forum message boards asure me that Still in Love is the thematic lynchpin, but I don’t get it and find the whole thing a wailing dirge. And a man who has proved himself so lyrically gifted should never be rhyming ‘bread crust’ with anything, nor referencing Joan of Arc – repeatedly!!

All said and done, though, I find myself wanting to put this album on. Snatches of several songs float through my head at odd times, pulling me in totally.

And if that’s not enough, FULL kudos to a track highlighting the importance of punctuation: the political ‘I give up’ of No, Surrenderneeds that comma! And if I tell you this final track has been said to be the sucessor, 20 years on, to Nothing Ever Happens, perhaps you’ll even know who I’m talking about!

Because I heard most of it live last night, and it was more beautiful, more heartfelt, more morosely cruel, than ever before. And it’s also the kind of thing you need up close and personal, to really listen to the lyrics.