Saul Adamczewski has a lot to answer for. And not necessarily just the questions raised by all the salacious rumours, true or untrue (probably true), that you've no doubt heard. His involvement in Fat White Family helped kick open the door for a south London scene of hugely, shall we say, diminishing returns that seems to have unfathomably outgrown its initial catalyst (I'll name no names and please for god's sake never talk to me about any of it). Penance, then, can be found in the return of his Insecure Men project, a collaborative group of varying riff raff I'd long thought had bitten the dust but return here sounding wiser than ever. This guy has been through a lot, self-inflicted or otherwise, and it shows, these nine tracks kissed with varying degrees of morbid humour, existential regret and surprising sensitivity. Take as an example lead single 'Alien', a 60s doo wop pop earworm that opens with what is honestly the most heartbreaking lyric I've heard all year: "I see you cry, I see you try and boil an egg, I see you desperately alone, i see you out with other men". There's an entire world of experience trapped inside those four lines that you might well relate to but haven't quite lived in the same way (here's hoping). It's a theme that continues throughout the record, as the songwriting shifts between registers (sometimes glam, sometimes downer folk/country, sometimes hard-to-place krauty-exotica, and quite frequently more introspective than ever before) and the band shows great subtlety and instinct in framing these songs of anything-but-innocence. Remarkable the fella's kept it together to make something far better than it has the right to be, and telling that enough people have stuck around to help him get it into the world. I'm not asking for the straight and narrow, but let's keep more of this coming if for nothing else other than an attempted raising of the collective bar. All the better for exposing the false idols that might otherwise act in his image.
FFO: Joe Meek, early-Scott Walker, Hasil Adkins, Jon Wayne, Armand Schaubroeck
