LILY ALLEN - Alright Still - 2006

LILY ALLEN - Alright Still - 2006
HIGHLIGHTS: Knock 'em out /LDN /Not Big/ Take What You Want /Alfie
SOUNDBITE: /Riding through the city on my bike all day/ Cause the filth took away my licence/
RATING: 5/5
Basically this is the bomb - really shiny nasty POP music. You have been warned. Maybe you've seen that Banksy stencil where there's this dodgy looking bloke bending over towards a little girl in a dress and she's holding a scythe behind her back. Well, that's this album. The majority of the tunes are skankin' pop tracks, quite a lot of which feature either loops or replayed aspects of various ska or reggae classics but the production is as hyper-polished as only producers who are slags for the top ten can make it. These are the sort of tunes that would have even Mary Whitehouse so happily humming along that she wouldn't be sure whether she'd heard lines like 'It's quarter to and we get to the front/ Girl on the guest list dressed like a c***' - a bit like that bit in 'Fight Club' where Tyler Durden splices the odd frame of a porn film into a Disney matinee while working as a projectionist. 'Knock 'em' out borrows the mad piano riff from Big Chief's ancient New Orleans funk 45 'Professor Longhair' but replaces the original break with a stuttering garage beat and a nasty synth bass while Lily rips into those really annoying blokes that can't tell when a lady just ain't interested - 'Nah, I've gotta go cos my house is on fire / I've got herpes, err no, I've got syphilis...' and more in that vein. 'LDN' is more laid back pop-ska track with brass and steel drums nicked from an old dancehall reggae number as Lily politely points out, in her Laahnden accent, the everyday nastiness that escapes the unobservant on the street. 'Alfie' is the album's up-tempo closer about her stoner brother and sounds like it uses that fat drum break from the Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) with Abba type synths and xylophones in what, tunewise, could be a Eurovision Song Contest entry. Man, imagine that. Terry Wogan should be all over that sh*t.