Swill & The Swaggerband - Elvis Lives Here (Irregular)

I put this one on blind while driving back from a recent Thai dinner. Minutes into the first track I started to suspect a dodgy prawn in my Tom Yum Goong, because I swear I was hallucinating a night at The Town Pump (RIP), pissed as a newt (as my father would say) on pale ale dancing to The Men They Couldn’t Hang (co-incidentally, the same un-hung men immortalized in The Tragically Hip’s ‘Bobcaygeon’ – another thinking man’s drinking band… or is that drinking man’s thinking band?). Safely home, and happily Googling, I find that, yes, indeed, the ‘Swill’ in question is Phil Odgers of TMTCH. Provoking another vertiginous episode as it appears that in the seventeen years elapsed I was totally oblivious to the fact the Phil was still at it! Still writing about drinkers and ‘tatty old boozers’ and lyrics with a social bent, like ‘World of Discontent’ and no song without a chorus you can’t sing along. Sad part is, despite swapping out Thatcher’s Falkland follies for the fallout of Blair’s Iraqi misadventure, it sure still sounds like 1989. Reassuring for some, unsettling for others.