ART BRUT

Bands like Art Brut come around once in a blue moon. Bands that as soon as you hear them, you think "That sounds like something that Australia will really take to".

Magnesium-bright, devilishly tuneful and blessed in singer Eddie Argos (foppish fringe; eyebrows seemingly grown in a hot house or lifted straight off Oscar The Grouch from Sesame Street), with the fi rst bona fide British pop star this century, Art Brut are as the Guardian recently pointed out, so "coolly uncool", they're fast becoming a national treasure.

But then not since The Smiths 'Hand In Glove' has a band announced themselves with the wit of first single 'Formed A Band',
which not only included the lines: "I want to be the boy, the man, that writes the song / That makes Israel and Palestine get along" but also prompted the NME to call it: "the most brilliantly simple single of the year so far".

How to describe Art Brut? A boozy art pop cacophony of Magazine meets Sex Pistols shrapnel, with Eddie delivering lyrics which veer between the pithy observations of the Streets' Mike Skinner and the lacerating honesty of Mark. E Smith of The Fall, often delivered in a Jarvis Cocker of Pulp style. "I really love Jonathan Richman and his songs are all about his own life" enthuses Eddie. "That's what I want to achieve: to make it so personal people can't help but relate to it."

Having come to the attention of Rough Trade via an excited call from a journalist, the band were duly signed within an hour of the label hearing the forwarded Mp3 of 'Formed A Band'. The band enacted a nifty mid-career label swap to Fierce Panda/Banana and follow up 'Modern Art' / 'My Little Brother' casually swanned into the Top Fifty (the first ever single to do so mentioning the Pompidou Centre). Which brings us to debut album 'Bang Bang Rock'N'Roll'. Named after a lyric from Jonathan Richman's 'In The Cappuccino Bar' and recorded in London with John Fourtis (Luke Haines) this is a record both more accessible and more vulnerable than their singles to date.

Estimated despatch 14-20 days after ordering.