In which this site, with all the gracelessness of a drunk 60 year old member of a famous rock band trying to cop a feel from an 18 year old Russian girl, attempts to get hip by association with a record so hip that it could drape itself over Kate Moss’s legs in a way that would leave exposed a most fashionable amount of midriff.

For Gang Gang Dance are truly hip. Take the name: mindless repetition plus the obligatory summons to the dancefloor. Take the cover to this record: thrown together with the painstaking attention to detail of art students. But most of all, take the magpie-like genre-collecting. Grime? Of course, and they’ll even have the ridiculous notion to get Tinchy Stryder to regale them with tales of life in Bow. “Inners Pace” does slinky dubstep. For the shoe-gaze of “Vacuum”, they drag MBV into the toilets of some club to do drugs that haven’t been invented yet and to have really fashionable sex. “House Party” attempts to kick start a Kate Bush renaissance, and is followed by a Kraftwerkian electro interlude. Amidst the tribal drums and minimal techno judder of “Afoot”, someone sings about “A country where cows are sacred…a land where most people walk”. If, as I think they are, they are talking about Sark, then this rebranding as the capital of cool will cause property prices there to double overnight.

As much as part of me wants to hate this record, I just can’t: they do it all with the self-assurance that (most probably) comes with being so god damn hip. There’s nary a duff track on here. In fact I’ve been listening to Saint Dymphna constantly. Especially at the back of the bus. With the volume turned up high enough so that other people can mistake me for some kind of hipster (is that word still cool? Is the word cool still cool? Gang Gang Dance would know).

Listen to “Desert Storm“. And/or buy the record. Whatever’s cool with you.