“I’m calling from the outside, take me back in”, snarls Martin Bramah at the outset of this 10-song album, Blue Orchids’ third in five years. It may be a lover’s plea but it also suggests the demand of a veteran outlier, though the band have hardly been denied critical acclaim. There’s a laudable unpredictability to Speed The Day: “Classy Fella” is a wry challenge to compensatory male behaviour set to a lounge-y groove, “What Lies Beneath” a dark, Can-ish workout and “The Pebble” an imaginative joining of the dots between Black Country, New Road and Flowered Up. Forty years on, Bramah’s terrific songwriting, rangy guitar and sharp wit are the constants.