Album

Reject

Three Solas-associated acts are releasing new albums this autumn. First out of the blocks are Stanley Odd, with their second album Reject. Through three EPs last year we'd come to be huge fans of this Edinburgh-based hip-hop outfit.

If you want to catch up with their back catalogue, check out The Day I Went Deaf, or its cheeky unauthorised Jackson Five mashup.

Reject is more of the same: huge sound, intelligent and provoking rap merged with smoky backing vocals, all delivered with wit, Scots idiom and authentic accents.

Sounds odd? That's a complement. "You say 'reject', I say individual" raps Solareye on Will the Last One Out Please Turn Off the Light. The band always make me think of Drummond/Cauty's pre-KLF outfit, The JAMs.

There's some material here that will become dated due to its subject matter (I doubt Nick Clegg and Andrew Landsley have been named on many other tracks). Others could become useful historic accounts such as Marriage Counselling, which lays out the independence debate as an exchange of letters between Caledonia and Britannia.

Sadly nothing here quite surpasses my favourite Odd track, the narrative How to Sing the Blues Laughing from one of last year's EPs.

But that shouldn't take away from what is here. Tracks about twenty-first century life while steering clear of hip-hop stereotypes are uplifting. Slightly reminiscent of a line in U2's Unknown Caller, the track Going Through the Motions plays out with the vocal "It's a beautiful day / please restart me / make my heart beat".

This deserves much wider distribution.