Album review: The Sexual Objects, Cucumber

Davy Henderson has been an enfant terrible with The Fire Engines' post-punk polemic, and a frustrated pop star in Win. Legend has it that if freak flooding had not fouled up their distribution company's warehouse, the lager advertising single You've Got The Power would have gone global.

Next came The Nectarine No 9, and nine albums spanning the centuries but never transcending cult status.

His current band The Sexual Objects retain the Nectarines' guitarist Simon Smeeton and drummer Ian Holford, adding the Creeping Bent label boss Douglas MacIntyre on bass.

Together they gather up every element of left-field pop rock and magic it into the most vital piece of the musical present you can hear. Cucumber is a record that engages throughout, from Here Come The Rubber Cops' oblique trash talk far beyond the closing acoustic twang and shuffle of Demonstration.

Whether scuzzing it up on Bluetime In Fluff 82 or tightening the velvet rope on the sublime Baby Wants To Ride, a glam rock philosophy is at the heart of this group's existence, right down to the chipped nail varnish.

Kodak Projector has the warm blow of a musical Indian summer. Either that or the ad for a chocolate flake, which is after all one of the most sexual objects of all. Henderson has never made an irrelevant record in his life, and now he has made the best album of the year to date.

Download this: Merrie England, Baby Wants To Ride, Queen City Of The 4th Dimension

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday, 3 October, 2010