Voices Of The People

Quality kitchen sink vignettes from the Marvin & Tammi of miserablism.

- Terry Staunton

Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott

N.K-Pop

EMI EMIV 204 (CD, LP)

Paul Heaton sits comfortably in a roll call of literate pop writers to emerge in the 80s, alongside such articulate wordsmiths as Lloyd Cole, Roddy Frame and Paddy McAloon. What sets him apart from those contemporaries is prolonged commercial success: a remarkable run of 16 albums to make the Top 10, with The Housemartins, The Beautiful South and, since 2014, in tandem with Jacqui Abbott.

Yet his approach to writing, on paper at least, is rarely that of someone clocking on at a typical hit factory, and his songs are routinely populated by characters, scenarios and subject matter more in keeping with Mike Leigh or Ken Loach. Pore through his back pages and you'll find yourself in a world where Top Of The Pops meets Play For Today.

Fresh off the back of winning the Outstanding Song Collection at this year's Ivors, this fifth pairing with Abbott is arguably his most accomplished sequence of songs to date. It takes in regret-filled pub landlords (The Good Times), self-destructive masculinity (I Drove Her Away With My Tears, Baby It's Cold Inside), mismatched romance (Who Built The Pyramids?), cynical Fleet Street manifestos (Sunny Side Up) and the divisive agendas of self-serving politicians (His Master's Game). Unusually for Heaton, N.K-Pop also references his personal life, in a joyous but snarky tribute to a late parent.