The second album from Nottingham quintet Six By Seven plays equal parts "Pablo Honey" and "Raw Power", with all the spitting introspection of early Radiohead and The Stooges' distorted hip swagger - "The Closer You Get" is the sort of album where everything gets distorted and disfigured, even the drums and vocals. They've got the song-titles-as-slogans angle covered as well, as tracks like "Eat Junk Become Junk" and "Sawn Off Metallica T-Shirt" testify. But for me the better moments on the album occur when they think outside the rather limiting template they've established for themselves, for example the slow, cracked electricity of "England And A Broken Radio" ("Everyone wants a DJ for a friend/I just want my radio") and the strings/Hammond/bass tumble "Another Love Song". Mostly, however, Six By Seven's music is an outpouring of unfocussed, splenetic rage which, no matter how genuine or 'for real', lacks the dynamics to stay consistently interesting - everything turned up to 11, and what if you never come down?

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