Luke Haines, mordant, acerbic chronicler of the record-industry’s failings, of art with a capital A’s refusal to accord him the respect his best work merits, bloated on bitterness and broken dreams, delivers his latest dispatch from the swamp in which he is now well and truly becalmed. Like Mark E Smith, he is stuck on repeat. But Smith’s acid shtick is so anarchically savage and scary that we cannot fail to renew our subscription. Haines, his finest work — with the Auteurs, Black Box Recorder and Baader Meinhof, and as the author of the superbly vicious Britpop anti-eulogy, Bad Vibes — behind him, here lionises cultural exiles such as Klaus Kinski, Peter Hammill and Stanley Spencer, to the same old Glitter Band beat, and with the same old sardonic sneer. There are snippets of genius. But what a saloon-bar bore he has become.

Fantastic Plastic FPCD025

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