Just Enough Education To Perform

'I got good lungs, got a good heart/My mind is fit and my feet can walk,' sings Kelly Jones, and it may as well be Sterephonics' life credo. "We're good men and true (they seem to say); we're happy with our lot, and that's good enough for us…" And that's exactly what's wrong with this record.

Seeing the world through the window of a tour bus these last few years has clearly given Jones an acute awareness of his own tiny inconsequence. But while his gruff Everyman humility is definitely welcome in comparison to most of 2001's soulless chart arrivestes, there's something about Jeep that's almost stubbornly conservative, as if any possible spark of pop magic has been deliberately dampened down.

Wonderfully venomous first single 'Mr. Writer', with its hard-eyed, undisguised hatred and hooting backing vocals like the executioner mocking you as you step up to the guillotine, is the best thing here: it's the only tune that's remotely complex, that sees Jones venture even tinily away from his permanent self-characterisation as guitar pop's Nice Honest Bloke Next Door.

Sometimes nice guys finish last. They've got good lungs, and good hearts: but the best pop music's always been about so much more than that.