NME - 20th January 2007

Live: King's Cross Water Rats, London
Tuesday, January 9

"There are seven deadly sins: thank the lord evil Britpop is not one of them

So the singer must be Envy then, presumably coveting Russell Brand's luxuriant plumage since he's got the rest of his student sex lizard look down pat. the Keyboardist must be Greed since he's sporting Britain's entire EU allocation of sideburn. the bassist is clearly Lust, being the bastard love child of Richard Hawley and a mob of horny gypsies, and the drummer, with his skinny tie and drumstick twirls, is Pride incarnate. Beelzebub's trousers! You half expect some deranged Christian serial killer played by Kevin Spacey to burst through the door at any minute and concoct elaborate suicide death plots for Envy & Other Sins.

They are, after all, the devil's Britpop. Somehow lacing their plinky synths, 'Parklife'-ish harmonies and soulful heartbeat with the stalking atmospherics of a whore slaughter in 19th-century Whitechapel, they're the evil poltergeist that a flat-lining Ambershades brought back from the Other Side; they're Jack The Rip-pop. Hence the stompy carousel piano of 'Northern Girl' features a line about "undertakers on a lunch break"and the jaunty Libs jag pop of 'Highness' turns out to be about the sort of sexual deceit that even a Lib Dem MP would consider shameful. And then there's 'It's Harder To Be A Martyr', slithering like the Edenian snake from an urchy knees-up opening through a succession of quirky time changes to a bit that sounds like Supergrass falling to their deaths from a toga party at the top of Big Ben. No, really.

So Best Midlands, of which E&OS are significant runners, isn't all gobby yob pill-rock it turns out, but a Brummie buffet of musical miscreants souring all slices of recent rock history. Drag this lot to confession to purge them of wickedness, you suspect, and you'd come out with The Feeling, but doused in deviance. As they are they're the chirpy pop kids having their first skag comedown on the stairs of The Twang's speed-encrusted squat party. So let E&OS into your hearts, and rejoice: we're all going straight to hell.