Intoxicatingly unique blend of punk

Enter is a short, soothing solo cello performance, tricking the listeners into believing that they are waiting outside a Julian Lloyd Webber soundcheck.

The command for us to be immersed into the album is intensified in Step Up And Step In, in which the band's true colours begin to emerge.

The underlying blend of avant-punk, jazz and ska, combined with other subtle twists and turns, leads them into uncharted rhythmic territory that establishes Fetch the Parrot Blanket as a more measured album than its predecessor. It loses none of the band's edge or uniqueness, but increases their maturity and confidence.

A short customised radio jingle humorously pastiches the band's critics, before launching into the blistering Suzanna, an ironic observation on the subject's apparently loutish behaviour.

Bloodshot Brown Eyes is unquestionably the album's zenith. The introspective observations are sympathetically augmented with sparse yet immaculately delivered backing, before the whole ensemble breaks out of their shell into a final defiant outburst.

Jello From The Sky catapults the band's anti-war credentials firmly to the fore and their uncompromising stance continues in The Same Game, a sobering critique on the continuing issue of racism in blinkered suburbs.

This bewildering yet intoxicating mixture of Ayesha Taylor's mathematically defying guitar riffs, Dawn Rose's supremely innovative rhythms, Tanguay's subtle underpinning bass and clarinet and Zoe Gilmour's single-handed achievement of transforming the cello into the most punk of instruments, climaxes with a flourish with Crack In The Mantle.

This album is a bona fide underground classic.

The band launch the album tonight at The Pleasure Unit in Bethnal Green Road, London.

LEE McFADDEN