Hell for leather

Question one: do you fancy unbridled enthusiasm and fiery passion, keen observational lyrics and fine playing, all on a rocking folk foundation?

Does the prospect of a dozen songs covering subjects including mortality, the cult of celebrity, hedonism, the vacuity of the lives of sink-estate yoof, and, of course, love, appeal?

Yes? Then I'd suggest you investigate the third album from Leatherat; it has all the above, cut through with an irreverent wit, much mischief and an 'atful of attitude.

Formed in 2004, the Oxfordshire-based five-piece has progressed with each album and, helped by a number of attention-grabbing appearances at the Cropredy festival fringe in recent years, has won a reputation as a dynamite live act.

Short Time On Earth boasts a dozen songs that stretch the band and excite the listener. This is folk-rock as it should be played with all the band giving it 110%, having a great time doing so and attacking each song as though it's their last.

The album starts all Primal Screamish with Peter Finch's 'I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more' rant from the movie Network. Almost a band manifesto, it fades into the title track, a devil-may-care celebration of the virtues (and pitfalls) of a life well lived.

Track two is Celebrity, a wry and dare I say it? cynical essay on the huge cultural worth bestowed upon us all by the likes of I'm a Big X Factor, Get Me on the Telly, Brother, as more trivial matters go almost unnoticed: While you celebrate celebrity, nations fight for liberty.

Elsewhere, Folkaine is English folk passed through a ZZ Top filter, and damned addictive, too; Party time (in Chavbury) highlights the emptiness of the lives and minds of today's disaffected, Burberry-wearing, knife-wielding youngsters; and Heresy raises the question of personal faith. The biggest surprise of the album arrives with the final track.

Can't stop is a quite gorgeous love song that benefits from a slowly building, and completely unLeatherat-like, gospel-tinged girlie chorus, the addition of which is a stroke of genius.

So, we come to question two: should you give the 'ats a chance? Definitely. Buy the album, then go see them play. They're a force of nature.

www.leatherat.com