Here comes trouble. Perhaps the first hint of fallout from the Beastie Boys' bratty attitude and timely, surreal raps, Pop Will Eat Itself has recorded an album of conceptual stupidity, a signpost of disposable pop culture in the late Eighties. The self-proclaimed kings of grebo – a British style of unshaven hard rock predicated on the belief that Bad Company invented rock & roll – the...

Ever since the Who and the Stones, if not the Revolutionary War, uppity British ironists have made a habit of "elevating" vulgar American pop crazes into high concept. This can get annoying, especially since their disco singers usually stink and their bratty young upstarts are always straining too hard. But when sounds on these shores get too sure of themselves, as house music and rap have done...