Grandiosely Verbose. The Wave Pictures, Long Black Cars.

The designation of prolific London-based trio The Wave Pictures' latest, umpteenth album suggests further despair and of course with David Tattersall's humour still dry, his smile still wry that's what we're presented with in Long Black Cars. Belting up beside opener Stay Here & Take Care Of The Chickens it's forthwith flagrant that musically too Tattersall et al. have scarcely deviated from the tear-sodden streets they know oh-so-well: melancholic minor key trundle, stripped-back drums, Franic Rozycki's obtrusive bass plod and here, a solo redolent of a hillbilly take on Sultans of Swing. Of course Tattersall remains inconceivably adroit with a guitar clasped to his chest although was a reshuffle in favour of injecting a little R'n'B sass from the genre du jour ever likely? No.

However The Wave Pictures have never been, nor ever will be, I suppose I optimistically presuppose, "about the music, man". Conversely it purely serves as a vehicle upon which their odes to soles walked upon to weddings (Eskimo Kiss) and sardonic anecdotes of rodents feasting on grim clotted milk amidst ludicrously unending grotesqueness (Never Go Home Again) may roll. Tattersall even finds time to rhyme "John Wayne movie" with "Richard and Judy" on paean to the lacklustre labours of unemployment on Come Home Tessa Buckman, yet another poem to yet another ingénue to add to the bulging catalogue of names struck through in the address book. Thus although the scraggy vocals of multi-faceted drummer boy Jonny Helm may never p-p-pick up a BRIT, Tattersall's engrossing narratives ought to snaffle an Ivor Novello or two sooner rather than later. First up, dust one down for My Head Gets Screwed On Tighter Every Year: whether conscientiously or out of the sheer lunacy the track gradually descends down into, Tattersall's sliding guitars and unhinged vocals insinuate that whilst his stringed adeptness may continue to improve exponentially, there's a loose imprudence seeping in to eradicate some previous predictability. "My heart bounced round like a basketball in a gym" and "Rattling away like an underground train, you work your way inside my ear" are two of the finer metaphors here enslaved and indeed so grandiosely verbose is much of Long Black Cars that any review could quite simply become elaborate regurgitation in place of relevant critique.

Like a collection of wildly expressive short stories, each track prattles on in a largely divergent direction although Tattersall is at his best when applying his complex vernacular to acquaintances of the despicable and/ or disgusting variety: Cut Them Down In The Passes, the tale of the 35-year-old man who "likes to look like someone who has seen too much", "his hair slicked back, black, held onto his scalp like a cap" is superb and superbly evocative of quick-witted hip-hop spit whilst the giddy jiggle of Spaghetti during which he reminisces: "Wild hair tumbling from the centre of your skull like spaghetti/ I knew then that you'd never forget me" is comparably engaging. It's yet another memorable lyric from one of the most unforgettable men in contemporary music but it's precisely this, the music, that this time betrays the still-novel wonder of Tattersall's flowing narratives.