The Streets: The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living

Herald rating: *

If cocaine is a performance-enhancing drug then Mike Skinner should change dealers.

The Brit-hopper spends much of this dreary follow-up to his brilliant 2004 breakthrough A Grand Don't Come For Free contemplating the ups and downs of "prang" and "tour support", while endlessly complaining about his cashed-up tabloid-friendly life.

While he perfected the art of making the everyday life of a London geezer vital and engaging on the previous album, here he reverses the formula - popstar whinges about the high life.

Whining about doing drugs in the presence of camera-phone-armed strangers in Prangin' Out might sound funny, but here it just sounds sad and shrill.

The maudlin Never Went to Church, about the death of Skinner's father, recalls Dry Your Eyes from A Grand ... but at least it sounds as some reflective time was spent on it. And it's hard to see much lyrical effort elsewhere, whether he's playing agony aunt on War of the Sexes or carping about the complications of his celebrity love-life on When you Wasn't Famous.

No doubt the next one will be the rehab record. Any more albums like this and Skinner will have the fame thing licked as well.

Label: Warner