After albums devoted to contemplating what it means to be an artist (interesting!) and the perils of spending a bit too much time on Instagram (original!), Mild High Club’s Alex Brettin serves up a record about how, like, everything is sort of… fucked, but have you read Mark Fisher’s Capitalist Realism, yeah I know everyone tells everyone else they’ve read it, but honestly it’s sort of really good?

Going Going Gone might be billed as Brettin’s most “explicitly political record to date” – taking stock of everything from kleptocracy to climate change – but Crass this ain’t. What we get is 12 sheeny, say-nothing songs that sit somewhere between the warm sloppiness of hypnagogic pop’s late-00s heyday and the usual Stones Throw soup of jazzy, headsy, wonky, high-end pop.

Which is to say that it sounds great. Standout track It’s Over Again could be Two Against Nature-era Steely Dan having fun on Fruity Loops; Dionysian State could be Gaucho-era Steely Dan having fun on Fruity Loops, and Me Myself and Dollar Hell could be Aja-era Steely Dan having fun on Fruity Loops.

Which is to say that it also sounds, well, hollow. The joins are too obvious, the anxiety of influence too present. Brettin’s aim may be true, but nothing on Going Going Gone actually communicates anything about the State of the World Today. Instead of a rebellious call to arms, we’re left with shaggy sixth-form stoner solipsism. It might sound nice, but does it mean anything? Does it?

Josh Baines