By the time of 1995's Some Call It Godcore, their third album since re-forming in 1990,
Half Man Half Biscuit had settled into a most productive groove. Every couple of years a new album appeared, filled with a fresh batch of bitingly funny lyrics and increasingly folky tunes by leader Nigel Blackwell. This one kicks off with a one-two punch of Blackwell's patented character studies of the cluelessly naff, "Sensitive Outsider" (pretentious guy who hangs out at Lilith Fair-type folk singer gigs), while interpolating the theme from Bonanza, and "Fretwork Homework" (schoolboy battle of the bands, featuring a dead-on lift of the riff from
AC/DC's "Whole Lotta Rosie,", and the classic closing chant "The chords are augmented/The amplifier's rented"). Later, "(Seen by My Mates Coming out of A) Styx Gig" sort of continues the theme, but with considerably more empathy for its hapless narrator, and though the spoken word (with a single acoustic guitar playing one chord endlessly behind) closer "Tour Jacket with Detachable Sleeves" has quite a bit of fun tweaking the ritual of the teenage couple at their first concert, it's quite likely Blackwell's gentlest and sweetest character study up to this point. Elsewhere,
HMHB return to their first love -- football, specifically their local team the Tranmere Rovers -- with "Even Men with Steel Hearts" and "Friday Nights and the Gates Are Low," Blackwell's most overt sports-themed tunes since 1985's classic "All I Want for Christmas Is a Dukla Prague Away Kit." ~ Stewart Mason