dudley-corp-cover-e1365596496516It’s been loo long since the last The Dudley Corporation album. Five whole years.  During this period even The Stone Roses have managed to reform so you’d be forgiven if you’d thought The Dudley Corporation had gone into permanent hibernation and disappeared from our consciousness.  Did this long period away mean that the band was bereft of ideas or on a creative hot streak and waiting to get the album just right?

Straight into ‘Everyone Does Everything Wrong’, we find what we’ve been missing with DLQ. The guitars creep and shuffle with menace as the drum beats stalk around the riff like a wolf hunting its prey.  It’s the song you didn’t know you had been lacking. Under The Lamb has a terrific rowdy appeal similar to what Large Mound used to produce. It blends into Grey Lights which begins with a sitar sounding riff, moves into more melodic choruses and builds up to a pogo inducing finale.

Over the course of their three previous albums, The Dudley Corporation have been quintessential  exponents of stop/start, quiet/loud songs and Above The Scum Below and So Sorry show that the band have plenty more to explore in this vein. The mellow Useless Humans is the first change of pace in the album. It ambles along before rising from its slumber to a crescendo.  Its position in the album is important as it’s like the eye of a cyclone, before returning to the swirling vortex of urgency we expect from The Dudley Corporation.

Kind Of Light with its tense bass line and hushed vocals races headlong into Laugh It Up’s choppy guitar riff. A metal-esque riff bridge on Little Blue continues the album going in a frantic heavier direction. The album takes a breather with Art Of Flight being the most catchy song on the album, and includes, wait for it, a string section which is as welcome as it is unexpected.

It’s back to business with the fractured vocals of Anamalyze, the jolting, scuzzy rock in So Sorry and the elongated guitar wig out on Everyone Does Everything Wrong Part II. For those who get the full LP version there is a bonus track, Flawed which is an apt title as it more stodgy and awkward than its edgier predecessors on the album.

This is an album in a hurry. On the downside, while it’s a visceral rush, there is little variation in tempo between the songs. It does result in taking a while for the album to reveal its subtleties, but when it does, it is an unruly uninhibited listen.