Album: Black Box Recorder

Passionoia, One Little Indian

It's sometimes difficult, picking between the welter of pre-packaged pretty-boy bands, pop-contest winners and second-hand wannabe-American ersatz Brit-hop "gangstas" that constitutes the contemporary music scene, to find any true reflection of our national character. The Streets may offer an arresting impression of what it's like to be young and not-so-streetwise in these times, but the most accurate overview of our wider cultural landscape is still, I think, provided by Black Box Recorder, whose skill at picking daintily at the scabs of our national obsessions remains unrivalled in modern pop. They're like the angry scorpion of Brit-pop, stinging the genre to death as they furnish its final great moments.

Passionoia continues where 2000's The Facts Of Life left off, with a further series of acid-etched portraits of the things that make this country grate. "British Racing Green" is perhaps the most telling, hinting at how the delusions of empire have now shrunk to bourgeois dreams of country cottages and dinky little sports cars. But what awaits the retired couple when they reach the Ambridge of their dreams? No greater welcome nor security than they experienced in the city, according to "When Britain Refused To Sing", an account of the way that surliness is fast becoming the dominant character trait.

The meagreness of modern ambitions is mocked mercilessly in "Being Number One", while the apparently affectionate recollections of an Eighties adolescence in "Andrew Ridgley" sound like a cautionary tale about the lingering impact of adolescent choices, the way they emboss our lives for ever, no matter how ill-judged or embarrassing. Considered in tandem, the two songs beg the question: do you really want your life placed in hostage to the asperity of a Cowell or a Waterman?

The Eighties adolescence of Luke Haines and John Moore is evident throughout in the electro-pop throbs underpinning tracks like "The School Song" and "GSOH Q.E.D." – aunt-Sally tilts at the education system and the personal classifieds, respectively. "The New Diana" is another dart at the vacuity of our cultural icons, while the most uncomfortable track here – and the one with the least ironic take on our national delusions – is "I Ran All The Way Home", in which a girl is frightened by an encounter with a bereaved couple who claim she reminds them of how their daughter would have looked, had she lived. At once sinister and sad, the song says so much more about adult/child relationships by avoiding the kind of trite sentimentality employed by Sinéad O'Connor on the Massive Attack album, opting instead for a more problematic scenario.