Martin Carr – The Breaks

Two decades since the UK alt scene was trampled by the bovver boots of Britpop, fondness for the era grows apace. Thankfully, nostalgia appears to have kept its head, with more lobbying for the return of, say, Ride than the mid-table likes of Kingmaker. And as for The Boo Radleys? Initially bench-warmers for the burgeoning scene, they eventually hit paydirt with fourth album Wake Up! and its airwave-chomping single Wake Up Boo! 

The suspicion that their return would inspire polite interest rather than hysteria, though, is an unfair reflection of the continuing Scouse nous of leader Martin Carr. Equally at home with documenting domestic intimacies (“The day’s first kiss feels like a fist” – Mainstream) as it is celebrity culture (Senseless Apprentice), The Breaks is a modest but heartfelt work. It’s typified by the closing title track, a considered and compassionate coda whose “If the breaks don’t come, we’ll just get by without them” refrain is universal and true. [Gary Kaill]