Album Review: Dr John Cooper Clarke & Hugh Cornwell - This Time It's Personal

Punk-era contemporaries - amphetamine poet Cooper Clarke and former Stranglers hardman Cornwall - present a covers album with an unexpected range of trash-pop and standards.

Doctor's unashamedly Manchester nasal tones, which can be surprisingly melodic at times, are delivered against Cornwall's dense guitar noise. The results can be almost bebop jazz - or karaoke night at The Salford Workers Club. The kind-of-sweet (It's Only Make Believe) collides with the dryly comical (Love Potion No 9). Then there's a sprawling ramble at MacArthur Park, which is either towering genius or towering folly - but, like the whole project, probably somewhere between the two.