An artist friend of mine took such offence at discovering there was a genre of music called art-rock that she instantly formed a ‘rock-art’ band in outrage. ‘Art’ to her was a purely visual thing, not even in the same sensory realm as the aural ‘rock’. I tried explaining that, in this case, ‘art’ referred to the more portentous, leftfield aspirations of such bands, but it still pissed her off. Anyway, her new rock-art band had secured a gig despite existing only as a concept, and a week before she was due to take the stage for the first time my friend enlisted the help of some actual musicians. These musicians were from a self-proclaimed art-rock band, and the demented, improvised gig they put on proved one thing: rock-art and art-rock are the same thing. But then what the hell does that make ‘art-punk’?

Art Brut are art-punk. The almost oxymoronic genre name scared me into thinking I’d have to pretend to know things about Gang of Four and Wire and use adjectives like ‘angular’, but thankfully, I don’t. In Art Brut’s circumstances, ‘art’ simply refers to the fact that they are too clever to be proper punks and write about proper punk things. Too clever in that they disarm would-be detractors within the first song, Formed a Band – ‘yes, this is my singing voice, it’s not irony … we’re gonna write the song that makes Israel and Palestine get along’, and too clever in that they never sully the fun with complex song-structures or, well, artistic aspirations.

Eddie Argos and his singing voice (deadpan Brit, basically) are the backbone and cornerstones of Art Brut. The music is solid, occasionally dissonant punk in the vein of Pinkerton age Weezer or Blur’s thrashiest moments – fun and beery, but hard to pay attention to when Argos is singing, which is practically always. He sounds like an amalgamation of the Young Ones cast: snotty like Rick, pushy like Vyvyan, kindly and benevolent like Neil and arrogantly cool like Mike. In fact, Bang Bang Rock & Roll is far more like a British sitcom show than should be possible for a punk album.

This is to say, it's funny and endearing. I’m aware of a wry smile on my face throughout its duration – at 29 minutes, Art Brut seem to have deliberately just fallen short of the unspoken ‘acceptable album length’ rule. Each song contains at least one amusing line and they concern (in order): forming a band, sibling going through tedious rock discovery, pining for a teenage romance, impotence, appreciating modern art, getting a new girlfriend, not getting the Velvet Underground, getting into a fight, being out of touch with popular culture, Enrique Gatti (who?) and, finally, confusing conversions of currency. Seems a total hotchpotch of unrelated guff on paper but actually comes across as vaguely conceptual on record; the Street’s A Grand Don’t Come For Free with a much smaller social conscience and more guitars.

Add in some inventive backing vocals, such as the ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’ chant increasing the mock-tension in Fight and the giddy squealing from Modern Art, and you have a severely entertaining, punchy little ‘artpunk’ package. The length of Bang Bang Rock & Roll’s shelf life is debatable, mainly due to an absence of superior, truly catch melodies to clothe the lyrics in, and it is not an album which facilitates any intensive dissection, but who cares? Tuneless shouting and mumbling has never been as much fun, or, to put simply, less arty.