Happy Mondays

Of all the improbable turnarounds in rock history, the transformation of Shaun Ryder from high-profile drug casualty to clean and sober bike-riding health nut must be the least expected; it's certainly the hardest to envisage. Yet such, according to the press release for this Happy Mondays "reformation" album, is apparently the case.

Whether Ryder can still cut it artistically without his once essential supplement of heavy fuel remains a debatable point, however. This reunion is but a partial affair anyway, involving merely Gaz Whelan and Bez of his former Mondays colleagues – which is to say, just one of the actual instrumentalists responsible for the band's former glories, along with the dancing vibemeister whose studio input is rather harder to quantify.

Accordingly, there's less of the purposive unity that gave the Mondays (and Black Grape) such a distinctive musical character: in place of their lock-tight, infectious dance-rock grooves, these tracks seem jerry-built and patched-up, lacking that once implacable heft and momentum.

Instead, the group have opted for a sort of psychedelic mish-mash approach, each track chopping and changing riffs and directions as if in flight from the arduous business of building a single memorable groove out of the mounds of accumulated fragments. The closest Uncle Dysfunktional gets to the "kinky Afro" or "Wrote For Luck" level of compelling immediacy is the title-track – and it soon becomes apparent that this is due to the bassline's resemblance to the groove of "Reverend Black Grape".

Lyrically, Ryder remains capable of vivid spurts of ear-catching imagery – none better than the track title "Anti Warhole On The Dancefloor". But he's at his most effective here when conveying menace – whether "banging on your bedroom window" in "Cuntry Disco" or threatening to "build a fuckin' house right next to you" in "In The Blood".

But for a supposedly cleaned-up guy, there seem to be a lot of drug references throughout the album – albeit doled out to guest vocalists or culled from vocal samples, like the repeated lines "I'm a drug-addicted alcoholic" in "Angels And Whores". One can't help thinking how odd it is for an ex-addict to cover "Rush Rush", the cocaine celebration from the Scarface soundtrack.

The line most applicable to this comeback album is in "Rats With Wings", when Ryder advises one and all to "slow down and take the joy off". Which is effectively what has happened here.