YOU have to admire Paul Draper's bottle. After the hype that engulfed his group's ambitious yet preposterously named and overrated first album, Attack Of The Grey Lantern, the singer/ writer/ guitarist has pushed the boat of taste even further into the sea of ill consideration - and made it to the other side. A two-part opus that may well have a unifying concept that we're better off not knowing about, the care that has gone into Six is evident, with breathless arrangements that threaten
to topple under the weight of ideas, yet prove unexpectedly beguiling after a few listens. The key to this is that the dense sound of Lantern has been refined and lent a subtlety that offsets Draper's monochrome vocal style. Shotgun brings to mind Magazine and Genesis in equal measure; Anti Everything is a meeting of Wire and Supertramp, while I can't decide whether Fall Out sounds like David Bowier or Babylon Zoo. Neither are opera or the classical canon safely out of Mansun's reach and, unsettling though this is, if you relax and go with it, the rewards are considerable. Six rocks, but mostly it rolls, and by the second time through, I was hooked.

Andrew Smith