AS mini albums go this is a Mini-cooper, with just enough legroom and giving you a nice bouncy, easy ride, showing the full five piece Carter to be a strangely sedate band, which hemmed in the latent energy they'd had before, and throwing extra emphasis on the lyrics, which curve back towards the earlier work.

There is drama and touching gestures in the plain striding title track, a beautifully touching song called 'Before The War' which once again buries you in several layers of drab society. ("Of all the bars and all the pubs, And all the late night drinking clubs, You had to walk into them all.")

The acoustic 'Nowhere Fast' is moving but bland, 'Johnny Cash' a grim experience with neat melodic upturns while the closing 'And God Created Brixton' maybe sums their justifiable demise up. With a title like that they would once have been a cocktail exploding themselves, but here the story of a strange night sounds like PetShopBoys getting down and dirty, and that really is rather strange.

Cute record overall.

BROKEN DOWN IN BROKEN TOWN
A WORLD WITHOUT DAVE
BEFORE THE WAR
NOWHERE FAST
JOHNNY CASH
AND GOD CREATED BRIXTON