Six Nation State Six Nation State WB rating out of 100

About 10 years ago the Britpop experiment failed. It was, perhaps, the most spectacular false positive in music history. Not five years after Definitely Maybe came out and Oasis started fighting with Blur to see who could recreate Britain's musical glory days of the late '60s, it was all finished. Oasis were exposed as a couple of drunken yahoos who had successfully aped The Beatles on two (admittedly excellent) albums, with little left in the tank, while Blur moved on, grew out of their Kinksian mould and it's likely that Damon Albarn was already thinking about starting Gorillaz.

Since then, the UK music scene has been somewhat itinerant, unsure of where to rest its head for longer than it takes NME to denounce it as outdated and derivative. 2005 saw Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand, Maximo Park, Futureheads and the Kaiser Chiefs reprise '80s new wave, only for the movement to collapse in the space of 18 months, and Bloc Party to staggeringly miscalculate their efforts to reinvent themselves last year.

Throughout the chaos of this past decade, two groups have popped up, creating nicely anachronistic music that has proved remarkably resilient to the tides of fashion and market forces that have pushed and pulled so many British musos: The Zutons and The Coral, both producing tunes which bear the indelible footprint of late-60s psychedelic groups like the Small Faces. Both have remained quaintly old-fashioned, perhaps biding their time until their particular brand of rock has its turn for a revival. Perhaps that time is now.

Six Nation State's self titled debut record bears an unmistakable resemblance to those two groups, but produces a more muscular variety, and seems to be intent on standing at the vanguard of a new, new, new-wave that will sweep the UK. Right now, in the fashion-obsessed London music scene, nothing seems further from cool as late '90s ska, but here is Six Nation State, churning out bouncy chav anthems, some with phony drunken cockney accent, most notably 'Taking Me Over', a fast-paced car chase of a song with frontman Gerry unleashing strangely inflected vocals that sound like a proudly uneducated Ben Ottewell from Gomez.

And what a set of pipes he possesses. He screams, moans, yells and rants his way across all 12 tracks, seemingly adapting his accent to whichever part of London he deems appropriate.

Six Nation State seems to suffer from a very old malaise, one which the age of CDs and digital music had supposedly sent the way of smallpox: sequencing problems. No record has been this top-heavy since Fuel's Sunburn, and that's hardly the most gratifying comparison that could be made. The opening six tracks are a rollicking ride into late '90s nostalgia - they’re not too taxing on the frontal lobe, but with their bouncy soccer hooligan beats and über-masculine vocal stylings they almost bring on that testosterone boosting sensation from the first time you heard 'Tubthumping' (come on, don't act like you didn't love it in 1996).

However, once 'Where Are You Know' opens up with its loud/quiet/loud dynamics, it starts to feel like you've been here before. Re-treading well-worn steps was fun for the first 20 minutes or so, but suddenly listening to slightly poorer facsimiles of the first half of the album isn’t all that appealing. Besides, why do it when there are superior records by The Coral out there?

The second half of Six Nation State is reminiscent of a time when music was made on vinyl, and the listener lacked a skip button, forcing bands to throw all their A-material on side one, hoping to ingratiate fans before they realise that much of what they've purchase is trite filler. There's nothing wrong with making music that's utterly uncool, in fact it's admirable. But re-hashing the same EP twice over and flogging it off as a complete record tends to leave the listener feeling short-changed. And there is one problem with making music that is the antithesis of cutting edge: it needs something to give it longevity. Whatever that is, Six Nation State doesn't have it.

This is not a record that warrants multiple listens. But, if you're ever at the pub, and have the sneaking suspicion that the football fans glaring at you are about to smash their pint glasses in your face for their own amusement, throw this on the jukebox, and it's even money, they'll toss the glassware, start jumping around the bar head butting each other. This would be a noble use for Six Nation State's debut.