The Young Punx Your Music Is Killing Me

That name notwithstanding, they're not likely to be mistaken for Gallows any time soon. Though Hal Ritson and Cameron Saunders do at least share something of a DIY sensibility with the Carter crew, so much so that, with this album, they've appointed themselves progenitors of "mashpop", which is a smart move for three very good reasons. First up, the last band to make a big deal out of naming their very own genre was the Klaxons, and nobody could argue that the benefits they've reaped from that have been on the right side of enormous. Secondly, it confers an air of conceptual legitimacy onto their dubious pranksterist past (remember that 118 118 cash-in single from a few years back? That, alas, was them). And finally, it neatly covers up the fact that the movement which they seen to have the most ostensible kinship with - big beat - reached its critical and creative peak some nine years ago.

Are we being too cynical here? As it happens, yes we are; form and fashion may not really be on their side, but, as it turns out, the Young Punx have proven able to use that to their benefit. Mind you, the signs were, admittedly, already there in their most recent singles, both wisely included here: Rockall was one of the great lost treasures of '06, exploding into life in neck-scruff-shakingly thrilling fashion and drawing on Cassetteboy's cut'n'paste M.O. to inventive, irreverent and mildly naughty ends with, of all things, the shipping forecast while incorporating a shockingly RAWK! solo midway through, while the more recent title track is another epic bonanza, blending mariachi guitars, disco strings and neo-futurist dramatic pop sensibilities into a beautiful Technicolor whole not too far removed from the notion of a gelatinous Electric Light Orchestra.

Cheerfully, they've applied a similar sense of wonder to a good many of the tracks here, with predictably joyful results. Interplanetary is poised for the greatest attention in these Guilty Pleasure-conscious times, seeing as it takes such gleeful liberties with the Carpenters, but it's joined by other stirring showstoppers such as the implausibly funky It Doesn't Stop, which is to all intents and purposes a foxy sonic afro, and Drum And Bacharach, a junglist odyssey peppered with samples so cheekily groovy that it suggests the beguilingly surreal notion of Squarepusher being commissioned to soundtrack the next instalment of Austin Powers.

Overall, in fact, much of Your Music Is Killing Me is blessed with precisely the genre-wandering and ludicrous joie de vivre that made Basement Kaxx's Remedy (whose structure it recalls, thanks to a series of interludes) or Junior Senior's D-d-don't Stop The Beat such delights. Yes, it outstays its welcome - 'Superman's Brother' is charmlessly daft, while 'Wake Up, Make Up...' might as well be later-period Apollo 440 - and it's severely short on seriousness, but that's all beside the point. They've not set out to change the world, but that doesn't mean that, now and again, the Young Punx can't make your day...