The Streets - Computer & Blues

(679)

After nearly a year off for family reasons, this allegedly final long player from The Streets is more full of focused energy than its disappointing precedent Everything is Borrowed. It’s not all perfect, as Mike Skinner’s liking for vocoder-massacred rave vocals, bubblegum chip pop and awkward rhymes manhandled into position come together in the nails-on-a-blackboard ‘Roof of Your Car’ and reappear throughout. Yet there are flashes of old brilliance too, namely the cocksure electronic blues of ‘Going Through Hell’, the seventy-second old-school garage banger ‘ABC’ and ‘Soldiers’ upbeat mournfulness. It’s the sound of an era’s voice wringing out his last words, a good place and a good way to leave it.