Basically, this is wholly familiar territory we’re treading. Lyrically ‘Two Lovers’ is a harmless enough tale of a wheelin’ dealin’ stealin’ man about town – salt of the earth, et fucking cetera. He gets into scrapes but ultimately has a laugh and, most importantly of all, gets the girl come the close of play. Compositionally it’s sweetly so-so enough too, evoking memories of the Charlatans at their most mediocre but not stirring the listener towards reactions fuelled by disbelief and hate. It is, simply, ordinary. It’s not dangerous in any way, and needn’t provoke any what-the-fuck bemusement from listeners with broader tastes than these own-five-records musicians.

Which leads to an equally simple conclusion: what, exactly, is the point of The Twang? They set out, around the time of the NME_ butt-kissing, to rile and irritate, to get under the skin of those that considered Kasabian knuckle-draggers of the highest order by actually out-dumbing them, albeit with a swaggering confidence that sat at polar opposites to their actual output. But to date the walk hasn’t once lived up to the talk, and while ‘Two Lovers’ could be summarised with a shrug of the shoulders and a beneath the breath meh had it been penned by a less-attention-seeking outfit, as this is The Twang we have to dock it a few additonal points for just being too dull. Too dull in a manner that its makers should never have allowed it to be, given all that pre-product rhetoric.