There’s a musical consistency to this band record, cut with two Liverpudlians from Clinic just across the Irish Sea, that’s missing from its companion release. Sung, talked, or sung-talked, Lennon’s enunciated vocals turn his brogue, if that’s what it even is, into lingua franca, and electronic though the band is, its music is rock, not techno or electropop. Lennon is the rare ranter in whom rage coexists with empathy and alienation with a well-observed life. Examples include “Piranhas of Xmas,” in which layaway gifts turn into nightmares, and an equally sad one in the voice of a “10 O’Clock T Break Bollix”: “Making smart remarks about people passing by cos I haven’t got self-esteem.” A-

Bob Christgau,Dean of american Rock Critics ( Esquire, Creem, Newsday, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Billboard)