With virtually no respite, Skint & Demoralised are back with ‘This Sporting Life’: a title certainly stolen from the 1963 love letter to Northernness and rugby league. This sly snatching of titles from kitchen-sink dramas of the ‘60s has, of course, been done before by a certain effete Mancunian but to see similarities in frontman Abbott and Morrissey is not as outlandish as it seems. For in both there’s an understated literariness and a sense that they’re both in perpetual hope of hearing a meteorologist mutter ‘overcast’. Where the latter tackled extensively the unbearable heaviness of being, Abbott opts for opulent tales of ale-soaked romance, using fictional lovers Franco and Maria as a shrewd device. The album starts emphatically with the anthemic and endearing ‘Hogmany Heroes’ – I consulted Wikipedia on your behalf; ‘Hogmany ‘means NYE in Scotland, apparently. ’43 Degrees’ follows and is nigh on identical in theme but is soiled slightly by a slightly synthetic chorus. As apologies go though, ‘The Lonely Hearts Of England’ is outstanding; 4 minutes of relentless, colloquial charm.  From here the album, rejuvenated, never looks back; the angry and despairing lament of ‘Lowlife’ is the undisputed highlight, closing an album well worth some overblown adulation.