I've avoided getting this for a while now, because (the brilliant Junkbox aside) there's something fundamentally odious about British groups discovering that long lost Mississippi riverboat captain in themselves and deciding that they dun got tha blooooze, man.

So, the good news is that "Devil In Me" sounds like Sons And Daughters and is brilliant. So does "Why Don't You Do It For Me?", and so does "I'm The One". The lyrics are mostly cut from a kind of unfaithful women, jealous men kind of cloth, which is of course the best kind of fabric for blues. The problems come whenever they let the tempo drop down, and they start indulging themselves in Oasis/Jet style pretensions of melodicism, which more or less works on "Baby Brings Bad News", but which tests patience on "Friends" (Primal Scream's "Damaged" but not as good), and most tediously on "The Things That Lovers Do" (rubbish).

The good bits are really good though, so focus there and skip the slow songs and you're onto a winner with this album. The drumming is ace and while the guitars are a touch overproduced, when they let loose and start screaming for blood, they bring a kind of voodoo power to the album that suggests the 22-20s are something more than style-obsessed copyists. -Ian Martin, Oct.20.04.

22-20s