The Housemartins – London 0 Hull 4

London 0 Hull 4 is a 1986 album by The Housemartins. It was their first album and contains the singles Flag Day, Sheep, Happy Hour and Think for a Minute. Paul Heaton’s laconic songs are nicely groomed and innocuous-sounding, with a happy jangle and rich harmonies (the group’s interest in gospel extends to technique as well as sentiment), but there is a dryly vicious sense of humour lurking inside them – Sheep flips a familiar religious image on its back and leaves its legs waving in the air. London 0 Hull 4, the band’s first album, is full of cheerful, taut little tunes about failures of the spirit, barstool sexism, and thermonuclear Armageddon – not to mention love of humanity, which underscored the fact that they weren’t just nihilists, they actually cared.

Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue, Remastered, Stereo, 180g