- Ben Salter, the long face behind The Gin Club and The Giants Of Science, even The Wilson Pickers (and there are more) is finally out on his own, and how does that sound? In some ways it's like going back to those seemingly endless years when Salter would busk in the Queen St. Mall, playing endless Beatles covers with great skill and gusto. It's the same classic, in some ways simple songcraft, executed perfectly by a highly experienced acoustic troubadour. The thing which sets it apart is that same thing which gave The Gin Club it's interesting qualities and most certainly the thing which led Salter and The Drones' Gareth Liddiard to collaborate on the production of this record, that being Salter's highly jaundiced view of the world and the darkest kind of gallows humour through which it is expressed. I'm certain it contributed to the bizarre, hilarious and often compelling deployment of instruments like the hurdgy gurdy, swedish bag pipes and a very 80s sounding saxaphone that litter these songs. I think Salter encapsulates it beautifully in the line in 'I'm So Tired Tonight': "I'm a Funny F***, all singing and all dancing, destined to give up and let the good lord give me cancer". It's like everything he does is one huge effort to stay ahead of the firmly held belief that it all must end horribly. So he races on while we get the privilege of being showered with the grim, funny and moving wreckage that his creativity hurls overboard on the way.