Smokers Die Younger - Smokers Die Younger

The eponymous second album from Sheffield’s bastards of passionate dysfunction is finally here, and it’s all about thrills for the pop connoisseur.

A word in your ear: while you’re really excited about Pavement’s planned reformation next year, make sure you don’t neglect what’s on your doorstep. It’s true that SDY will be lying there unconscious having called Huey all over your herbaceous border, but the thing is they are here and now and you’ll want them just as much.

If you were blown away by the beauty and heartbreaking intensity of the first long player, X Wants The Meat, this thing’s going to do you in completely. Full of rollicking singalongs like Drinking Song, Seconds, and Knives, it’s also a record that will break your heart. It screams of tumultuous break-ups and the band’s own fragmentation and reconfiguration - a process that involved the sad loss of original drummer Chris Trout, and several gains including that of Katherine Jackson and the return of Mistress Amy Dutronc, whose respective violin and vocals add luxuriant dimensions to an already accomplished sound.

Stylistically they are all over the map. Producer Alan Smyth (famous for his work with Pulp, Arctic Monkeys, The Long Blondes) affectionately calls Smokers “my Velvet Underground”. Critics have likened them to pretty much every great name in the indie canon, but what do they know? Their self-description - “asbotic, mangular post-indie wonkathons” – is a good starting point but misses key qualities of listenability and sexiness. This record also sees a development in the vocal tournaments that mark them out from the rest of the world, as lead voice James (think the delivery and dry observations of Joe Jackson combined with the savage rawness of Huggy Bear) is variously joined by Amy, Rhys and Trout.

Youth Map kicks in like a dizzy New Order with synchronised bellowing you can march on the spot to. Telemark is powerful summery pop, more melodic than Grammatics even. A maturing of James’ vocal style can be witnessed on the gorgeous, autoharp-laced faux waltz Holler If You Hear Me. Drinking Song could be The Pogues covering the Oliver! soundtrack, without losing a shred of the pathos of either. Seconds is a superior pop moment with Joy Division keyboards and lots of screeching. The whole album works up to Redrum, a wonderfully complex, heart-rending triptych. “When you say it’s over... can we not talk this over?” – words torn from the heart are layered over one mournfully repeated line - in Welsh. It culminates with unwound guitars that rear up in squalls, and then all the angst of the previous nine songs is compressed into a one-second two-note joke ending that says everything. And then you have to play it all again.

The product of so many unhealthy late nights, Smokers Die Younger is glossy on the outside and dangerous within. Go on - open the damn packet... 

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