SLASH! Slash! You can just imagine the razor blade across Chris Bailey's wrists. After Bailey orchestrated his own high public profile last year, claimed the kudos for the Saints (Ed Kuepper still smarts about picking up a Saints compilation CD of his songs and finding Bailey's name written all over it while his name is quite a way down the "and-also-thanks-to" list) and laboured over the overblown and over conceptualised Demons, along comes Kuepper snapping at his heels like a terrier, firstly with the sonic majesty of the Aints and now the magnificent Honey Steel's Gold.

Ray Purvis