Sweaty Handshake

PET LAMB: “Sweaty Handshake” (Roadrunner)

IT BEGINS, as these things often do, innocently enough. A grumpy midtempo bass riff rumbles away for a few seconds, some drums are thumped, some guitar is stroked and then it’s back to the one and lonely bass, giving you, the listener, a final few moments of peace before the melée ensues.

“Everything that drove you crazy was everything she said/Thought she was a little sick and now she’s lying dead/It grows/It grows/And it will kill you in the end/It hurts/You curse/and you will never rest again,” rasps Dylan Phillips while on either side of him Pet Lamb launch into their customary cleansing thrash, the dead are promptly woken and it’s true - for the next fifty minutes you will, as the opening title suggests, never rest again.

This band is driven and this record is hard going. ‘Happiness is Mine’ is not, I would guess, their cover of choice (though it should be, just to mess with some minds). They sing and play about growing up, about how scary it is to turn twenty and discover that you’re on your own, your childhood friends have burnt their bridges and have started the familiar trudge through life that they swore they’d die to avoid and everything is, essentially, about to turn to shit. They do so in a manner that is eloquent but not particularly elegant. And, even moreso than REM (if that can be believed), they rrrrrock. Oh yes.

In general, cranking up the volume to eleven is fun, it’s invigorating and it also clears any unsightly wax from your ear canals. And that’s true here also - this band’s ears are immaculate - but volume is also something to hide behind. When your words are as personal and, often, as unbearably sad as Dylan’s and Brian Mooney’s, it’s easier to bury yourself in the barrage.

‘Little Meaner’ is the fourth song and features a vocal from a trembling child in the throes of losing his innocence, in other words a Dylan who has just been dumped and refuses to be jolted back to reality: “What are you going home for?/What are you going home for?/The grass is always greener . . . Every time I see you, you get a little meaner,” he sobs, somewhere deep in the mix, and you feel like joining in. ‘Where Did Your Plans Go’, which resembles an extraordinarily bilious out-take from Immigrants, Emigrants and Me, is another tuneful cascade about a wasted life, and will no doubt click with anyone who has just traded in their dreams of emulating Jimi Hendrix or an astronaut for a more attainable but perhaps less thrill-packed life as an accountant or a doctor, or something - you hear it and feel small, but only if you already are small. Which most of us are.

So, an intoxicating slice of grimness with gusto, with which I have only one problem - ten of these songs are already available in Ireland on Pet Lamb’s two Blunt EP’s, so perhaps some vinyl and CD-making stuff is being wasted, but that’s for Sting to worry about. That aside, Sweaty Handshake is a worryingly good record from a band with a bright past and whose future records we can look forward to with pitter-pattering hearts. Wham-bam, thank you Lamb.

• Niall Crumlish