After the shock that was A Grand Don’t Come For Free, I mentally added The Streets’ first album, ‘Original Pirate Material’ to my ‘should buy that at some point’ list of CDs.

It’s in good company, I think, alongside such delights as Pulp’s ‘Different Class’, and Interpol’s ‘Turn On The Bright Lights’. We all have lists like this, I’m sure – albums we always mean to listen to, films we always mean to see, books we always mean to read, celebrities we always mean to seduce – we just never quite get around to it.

Fortunately, HMV saw fit to have a summer sale, and amidst all the Geri Halliwell and Lamar crap that they’re desperate to shift but will inevitably have to turn to fly-tipping to get rid of, I found The Streets’ Original Pirate Material for the low, low price of £3.99. And it’s not even *as* good as their follow-up – it’s better.

It doesn’t appear to have the single underlying story of A Grand…, which I did miss at first, but it makes it easier to listen to individual tracks out of sequence (haven’t managed to pick out favourites yet though). Some songs sounded familiar as well – the prophetically titled ‘Same Old Thing’ really sounds as if it was harvested for good bits to use on A Grand…, and it turned out that I knew and liked ‘Let’s Push Things Forward’ already, without knowing who it was by, which is always nice.

It feels like a more intelligent record, with social commentary provided by ‘Geezers Need Excitement’ (“Geezers need excitement/If their lives don’t provide them this they incite violence/Common sense/Simple common sense”) and a tongue-in-cheek diatribe regarding the legality of alcohol and the illegality of cannibis in the comedy genius of ‘The Irony of it All’. The Criminal Justice Bill gets two fingers as well in ‘Weak Become Heroes’.

It’s not all Channel 4, of course. The poignant ‘It’s Too Late’ sees Mike being dumped (he sounds much younger as well), ‘Too Much Brandy’ sees him out on the lash, and ‘Don’t Mug Yourself’ sees him chasing after someone new (against the advice of his friends). It’s more musical than A Grand… – more rap than poetry. Whilst with A Grand… I felt that you could take away the music and choruses and it would stand on it’s own, Original Pirate Material needs those aspects. That’s not a bad thing, of course.