Skint & Demoralised - This Sporting Life

On this album, it’s fair to say, Skint & Demoralised are not reinventing the wheel. ‘This Sporting Life’ definitely has its highlights - it’s not an album you listen to and hate - but it struggles to leave you with more than a little shoulder shrug.

Most songs despair slightly of their own monotony. Lyrics such as ‘We’re gonna have a party / Everybody’s gonna come along,’ like singer Matt Abbott declares in opener ‘Hogmanay Heroes’, feel somewhat uninspired; others, such as ‘The only way to love myself is spending time with you’ from ‘Fireworks’, leave you asking yourself ‘Really?!,’ in a slightly squeaky voice.

It’s not the simplicity though that kind-of-ruins the songs: occasionally it works perfectly. One of the highlights is ‘The Lonely Hearts Of England’, a song so simple, sounding so much of pub, that it makes you yearn for a pint. There are no surprises, but that’s fine. The faster parts sound familiar, the slow ones are predictable, and that the lyrics mention drinking Whiskey like milk is okay, too. It just works.

‘Did It All Go To Plan?’ is another example. Whilst Abbott’s voice isn’t quite strong and unique enough to make you ignore the slight dullness of this ballad’s verse, the simple ‘Haaa-ah’’s in the chorus work a treat. The best song of the album however is the last: ‘Lowlife’ is angry, grumpy and loud. It’s still average indie rock, but the good kind, the very good kind, that makes you use that squeaky voice again as you ask this time, ‘Why not more of this?!’

Ultimately, ‘This Sporting Life’ fails at its discrepancy between Abbott being a poet and the singer of a band, not having quite the feeling for melodies and neither writing lyrics that stand out from the mass. It’s not a bad album however; besides, ‘Lowlife’ sounds so promising that you might take the album from the shelf again, now and then.