The Cesarians – Pure White Speed

Modern life desperately needs agit-pop. Something to shoot holes in perceived wisdom. Get it wrong, however, and you can end up with a mess like Pure White Speed. It’s not an experience lacking in energy (the six tracks are done and dusted in just 20 minutes), and in frontman Charlie Finke there’s posture aplenty, the horn section bouncing off piano-driven rhythms, adding all sorts of crafty punctuation.

Yet from opener Meltdown onwards, gibberish is sprouted as if profound polemic, reminding us that Earl Brutus did this type of thing with far more panache 20 years ago. Both Woman and She Said deal with gender politics with ham fists, Blunted and Creation Theory sound like several different songs bolted awkwardly together, whilst Manquake segues into a piss-take of Beck’s Loser for no other reason than (presumably) they know the chords. At its sharpest, agit-pop kicks against the pricks; Pure White Speed only manages to kick its own shins.