Mongrel - Better Than Heavy

There's a damning amount of empty political posturing on this album. As insightful as Hard-Fi about our country's social and political failings, this is a petty disenfranchisement, a desire to identify with counter-cultural ideas without providing any substance to justify it. Failing to provide any answers to their dissatisfaction, Mongrel barely even ask any questions. Musically, this is a skank of English ska, Gallagher-esque tambourines and drum rhythms that try for an off-beat hip-hop lilt. The union of guest grime MCs and sub-Ordinary Boys indie lair isn't a complete disaster, the majority of the rappers happy to turn up, spit a one dimensional cat/rat/mat verse or two, and disappear again. Unfortunately, creative force Jon McClure, also of Reverend and the Makers, is so (w)rapped up in his 'underclass' status and so blinded by a glitterati of identical guest rappers, that his project fails to deliver much of anything. [Jamie Scott]