“We hate it when our friends become successful” sang Morrissey, but as far as I can tell, he hated everything, the flower-waggling fop. Seasides. Sundays. Sex. Foreigners. However, walking into the Rough Trade shop on Brick Lane the other week and seeing a whole rack devoted to the new album by my dear friends Dark Captain Light Captain filled me with an inordinate sense of pride.

Dark Captain Light Captain are indeed a tale of light and darkness. They grew from a kernel of guitarist/vocalist Dan Carney, ex of shambling East London noisemakers Father Of Boon, and Neil Kleiner, one time saxophonist for the Steve Reid ensemble, but here featuring on electronics/clarinet/muttering/strangeness. This folktronic centre is expanded with the addition of a second guitarist, bass, and trumpet, but is kicked into a whole other place by the presence of ex-Quickspace drummer Chin Keeler, slicing tracks to ribbon with his razor-sharp krautrock stylings. Even the album’s more pastoral moments and sweetest, lushest vocal harmonies are kept in check by Carney’s increasingly disconcerting and paranoid sci-fi non-sequiturs.  In hyperdrive…you’re lashing out violently…with your metal limbs…your cattleprod…your x-ray eyes. And behind all this, Kleiner is subtly warping atmospheres and scraping at textures, only rising to the foreground on the Robert Wyatt/Aphex Twin/Star Trek fusion (why someone didn’t beat them to that I’ll never know) of closing track “Spontaneous Combustion“.

Perhaps another of Morrissey’s song titles is more apposite: November Spawned A Monster. A twelve-legged one. Miracle Kicker is available now from Loaf, and Dark Captain Light Captain are touring the country now (their slow, sinister version of “Easy Lover” is worth the ticket price on its own).