Album: Pitman

Pit Closure, SON

Pitman is the putative rapping Leicestershire miner whose comic counterblasts at UK street-culture pollute the waters in Brit-hop's swimming-pool. A comedy persona with more than a whiff of John Shuttleworth about him, he's the dyspeptic uncle at the trendy house party, the grumpy old git stood by the kettle moaning about how crap "urban" music is, and haven't they got any Kool Herc or KRS-1 instead? And, well, he's got a point. The follow-up to last year's It Takes a Nation of Tossers, Pitman's Pit Closure is a savage indictment of the bankruptcy of UK-garage attitudes, with parodies of Blazin' Squad-style groups and DJs who are misguided enough to use the terms "wicked" and "flava". Even that critics' darling The Streets is here lacerated in a hilarious, stream-of-cockernee-consciousness that keeps slipping back into Brummie dialect. The album concept loosely revolves around Pitman seeing a therapist about his grumpiness; this affords plenty of latitude for broadsides at everything from R Kelly ("a 50-year-old man who likes going to Disney a lot") to iPod users, reality TV and, especially, students who talk rubbish about Glastonbury: "They're all a bunch of virgins in a big field with no mates and no toilet roll." A welcome purgative for an over-indulged, under-performing youth-culture.