Incredible though it seems, it's a full two decades since mad Wirral buggers HALF MAN HALF BISCUIT released their indie chart-busting debut album "Back In The DHSS." Stories of their commercially-successful first incarnation have become legion and the one about them turning down a slot on influential TV music show 'The Tube' because of a prior engagement watching their local team Tranmere Rovers still raises a smile these days.
But however great HMHB'S early material remains, it's been their 'cult favourite' second coming that has - for this reviewer at least - produced the stronger body of work. Indeed, the immortally-titled "Achtung Bono" (their first full-length album since 2002's "Cammell Laird Social Club") is arguably their best album to date. No mean achievement, bearing in mind the quality of what has gone before.
For a starters, it's perhaps their most consistently rocking set since 1993's "This Leaden Pall". Indeed, the opening salvo alone features the rumbustious ramalama of the hilarious "Restless Legs" , the sturdy, drum-heavy "Corgi-Registered Friends" and the suitably ribald terrace anthem "Shit Arm, Bad Tattoo": all of which make it abundantly clear that HMHB'S ability to marry the daftest and most brilliantly surreal of images with the most immediate of tunes remains undiminished with the ravages of time.
Of course it helps that in Nigel Blackwell they are led by one of the world's greatest living satirists/ lyricists and once again he hits a rare seam of form here. Songs like "For What Is Chatteris" (erk! a love song of sorts!) and "Surging Out Of Convalesence" are full of genius lines like "You never get people being hit on the bonce/ though there was a drive-by shouting once" ("...Chatteris") and "Last Ash Wednesday I had tantric sex and it was shit/ next Ash Wednesday I might try to lick my elbow") ("...Convalescence") and while there are more brilliant couplets than it would take ten reviews to home in on, this writer's personal favourite one this time round comes during "Under Westminster Bridge" when Nigel sings "Help me, Mrs. Medlycott, I don't know what to do/ I've only got three bullets and there's four of Motley Crue." Hurgh hurgh hurgh.
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This being the Biscuits, there's loads of amusing, spot-the-reference musical bits as well. The riotous "Joy Division Oven Gloves", for example, finds Nigel gently taking the piss out of the legend of Ian Curtis, Neil Crossley's bassline ribbing Peter Hook and Ken Hancock's two-note guitar solo aping JD's Mancunian neighbours The Buzzcocks' "Boredom." The surprisingly complex "Twydale's Lament" sounds like The Fall taking on a Math-Rock Allstars ensemble and comes on like a cross between "I Hate Nerys Hughes" and "On Reaching The Wensum" from 1998's "Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral" (look, trust me, OK?) and the fantastic closing anthem "We Built This Village On A Trad.Arr Tune" is a preposteriously rousing singalong that's sure to become a live favourite to rival "Everything's AOR" and even "Trumpton Riots". Oh, and within the lyrical scheme of things Brenda Blethyn gets shot, so everyone's happy, really.
The world has both changed immeasurably and stayed resolutely the same since Half Man Half Biscuit first lightened our lives, but they remain both the laziest and most brilliantly creative sods grubbing around in the indie margins and with "Achtung Bono" they've once again pulled off a coup. Talk about nonchalent genius.
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