I’ve spent a lot of time around alternative music. From as early as I can remember I have always seemed to enjoy the stuff that’s not as mainstream, or want to broaden my tastes with new and interesting genres and artists. It has helped with conversations, pub quizzes and above all my Dj sets. I tell you this not to be boastful, or condescending – why, that would be an awful thing to do to you, dear Beard Rock reader; you can count on me never pulling that shit. No… I tell you this because I have just finished listening to A Clean Kitchen Is A Happy Kitchen’s eponymous album and I want you to believe me when I say I tried to like it.

It sounded promising enough at the start; with a large helping of grimy, discordant instruments, loose timings and general Beefheart-esque musical mayhem that normally makes me listen, so I made a smoke and settled into my chair.

Some time after the third track I couldn’t shake a niggling thought. It was sounding more and more like a college pleb-rock band and was getting worse. By halfway I was skipping through it, losing the will to live whilst desperately trying to find good in it, and by the end…. Well put it this way. Imagine you are in your primary school music class and Mark Arm, An Elephant, Celine Dion, and the cast of “Enter the Dragon” are fighting over who gets the wooden fish thing whilst the fire alarm goes off.

It sounds like Primus, but not as clever or entertaining, I hear influences of The Fall and Butthole Surfers, but much more amateurish. It’s Lightning bolt on a bad day (and that’s being nice), it’s irreverent bullshit and has been done before loads better.

This album hints of a good album but never ever gets there. On paper it should be one, but all it does is annoy me and make me want to turn it off. It struggled to find one good track that doesn’t disappoint and I listened to it in it’s entirety on three separate occasions in the hope it was “a grower”. It wasn’t, what a shame.