‘9 to 5 is all there is, they pocket all the paper clips, take a handful of the staples, spat out by the bad appraisal’ (Stationery)

Seven tracks, nine minutes, and an absolute shedful of ideas thrown together with a rare abandon can only mean one thing – the return of Nottingham’s No Peeling.  This is the follow-up to last year’s self-titled debut 7-inch, and the playfully hyperactive, impulsively off-kilter aesthetic remains utterly untamed.

The joust for supremacy between the scrappy guitar and jarring synths resembles two octopi trapped in an eternal arm wrestle from which neither can escape.  As a result, despite their relative brevity and the committed endeavours of the tightly spry rhythm section, each track relentlessly morphs and reassembles in chaotically unexpected directions.

In the wrong hands, matters could easily unravel and the fact that they never do speaks to the band’s shared intuition for the road less travelled.  The binding glue is, perhaps, the gently drawled, dryly sardonic vocals as they roam from the unwieldy brawling of furry sporting mascots to grabbing your fair share of office stationery to compensate, just a little, for the soul sapping clock watching.  My personal highlights are the darkly swelling Night Idea and the fractured convulsions of Stationery.