Coming outta Staines with all the urgent blue collar stress that attends bands who really want to make it and be, like, the biggest band in the world, man, after a lifetime of getting by and doing without, Hard Fi are one of those bands - and ‘Stars of CCTV’ is one of those albums - that stands out of the current crop.

There's no messing about. The album kicks off with ‘Cash Machine’, a tune both rockin' and funky that marries a below the breadline howl akin to Mark E Smith's ‘Couldn't Get Ahead’ with a foot-tapping bassline. Front man Richard Archer has said, “We're a rock band but we listen to hip hop, we listen to house music, we listen to dub and reggae and we're not afraid to introduce that”.


And you can hear it, in tunes like ‘Middle Eastern Holiday’ and ‘Tied Up Too Tight’. What all these bands wrapped up in The Clash forget to remember is that The Clash liked a whole lot of bands and brought a diversity of influences to bear. It wasn't ever all scratchy power punk and shouting. Hard Fi nod to vrr Clash and (at times) Dexy's Midnight Runners and a whole host of instantly recognizable bands but (in the same way that The White Stripes swallow up blues and spit out a modern racket) so Hard Fi are instantly far more than the sum of their parts.

There's a celebratory urban simplicity to proceedings - here's the tune (and no messing about, each tune is a CHOON), here's a rousing anthemic chorus (miles away from the lumpen dirge of Oasis' best efforts), here's a hook, here's something you'll wake up singing. You listen to ‘Hard to Beat’ (which is a top ****ing single, my friends), you listen to ‘Living for the Weekend’, take your pick of any tune on here: it's all good. If you were being too picky then you could say it lacks the ambition of the most recent Antony and the Johnsons album or the heartfelt sturdiness of Editors' debut, but for all that - this is a smashing rekkud that deserves its place on the Mercury Prize list of nominees.

words: Pete Wild

[eyeballkid]Pete Wild[/eyeballkid]