england

Sounding every bit like a band born out of time, The Favourites have released their debut album - 40 years after they expired. 

Throw your mind back to 1977-79 (pretend, if you weren’t born) and think about the music de jour in the UK. Punk? Ska? New Wave? It sure wasn’t Power Pop. What was around used the descriptor New Wave and was at the mercy of the notoriously fickle UK music media. So-called provincial bands (not based in London) had their work cut out. 

The Favourites grew out of two Nottingham bands, the DTs and Plummet Airlines, the latter signed to Stiff Records. Their two-and-a-bit-year existence was peppered by recording sessions and live work, and they shared stages with Squeeze, The Rich Kids and The Only Ones. 

The Hip Priests are angry as fuck and want you to know about it. The urgency and energy of past albums are intact but leery innuendos and odes to drinkis-and-drugs excess are toned down on their latest long-player, replaced by a seething fury.

There's no mistaking the target of the musical Exocet that's opening track "Welcome To Shit Island". It's an all-guitars-blazing assault on the pro-Brexit brigade wrapped up in a punk rock letter bomb. And there's more in store on the other nine tracks - with a focus on everyone from the forces that would wipe out rock and roll to the man down the road at number 19. .

Hip Priests hail from Nottingham in the UK and if you think Little John's longbow was the most dangerous thing to come out of Sherwood Forest, adjust your green tights. The Priests play it like Backyard Babies. TBNGR and the 'Copters - which means they sound like all those dirty arse Scandirock bands of the late '90s and early '00s. 

You could say "Stand For Nothing" is not for the faint-hearted or the hard of hearing. You would be right. You could also say Hip Priests are in that last-man-standing category of Real Rock and Roll Bands. Correct again. You win a cigar.