Guessmen - 'Back From The Bins' (Co Lab) Released 28/01/08

Never judge a book by its cover, they say.  And never judge an album by its cover or title, I say.  I’ll admit that I rather feared 'Back from the Bins' from Newcastle three-piece Guessmen was going to be 'Stomp Revisited' after seeing them sat in a dustbin suspended from a balloon on the front cover, but thankfully, it’s not…quite. Sculpting their songs from found sounds and reclaimed and recycled instruments, these Geordie boys have been described as pioneering the “contra-pop” scene, have supported acts as diverse as Maximo Park, Altern-8 and Coldcut and found a famous fan in the unexpected form of Isaac Hayes!

It’s fair to say that 'Back from the Bins' is not the crusty, whippet-on-a-bit-of-string disappointment I was expecting. On the shouty stuff they do lose their way a bit, sounding like a revamped theme tune to Scrapheap Challenge ('Animal Man Robot') or they are trying to make themselves heard in a particularly loud working men’s club like on 'Troglodyte'. In between the chaos of megaphone-vocals, junk-percussion and god-knows-what, there are sporadic filler tracks. Most just over a minute long, some work, but most sadly don’t, like 'Orangutang'" which sounds like it has all the right instruments but in the wrong order! And penultimate track 'Under Rocks and Stones' sounds like a nightmare you'd have whilst camping in a gale somewhere near Bodmin, and is thankfully brief.

However, 'My Sugar' finds its way back into more accessible territory, mainly because it is given a more consistent beat and the vocals are reigned in, and when Guessmen go tip-hop (forgive me), on tracks like 'Sunglasses', 'Chip N Bean' and the almost instrumental 'Warning', all the repetitive jumble that went before is almost forgotten.