Its fans have gone so far as to call it “a film for the blind”.  Pretty strong stuff you might agree.  Yet while it may be hard to swallow such charitable acclaim at first, no one is suggesting that Ben ‘Plan B’ Drew’s anticipated follow up to 2006 grime juggernaut ‘Who Needs Actions When You Got Words’ is anything but exciting.

Before we even get on to the music, the title presents you with a fairly punch-in-the-face hint of what’s to come.  ‘The Def-a-ma-tion of Strick-land Banks?’ you read perplexed, squinting down at The Stag, spluttering each syllable aloud like you’re choking down a protruding fish bone.  That’s right, The Defamation of Strickland Banks.  Pretty pretentious, eh?  A bit like a Shakespearean tragedy, only this time Lady Macbeth is Effy from Skins if the music video for let’s-show-Winehouse-how-it’s-done lead single ‘Stay Too Long’ is anything to go by, and that guy he’s yelling about glassing outside Wetherspoons is Iago, maybe Caliban.  Who the hell even cares.

The point is that Drew has launched his heart and soul into a concept album, and soulful it is.  Gone are the days of rapping in a Nike hoody under an East End bus shelter, these days Plan B is all about the glamour.  What his critics may call a messy divorce from grime, many more are calling an inspired reinvention of sound.  In other words, Drew is cleaning up his act and aiming for the top.

Nothing quite announces this like second smash single ‘She Said’, which stormed the charts this Easter to gain mainstream popularity.  At this point in the story, Strickland has winded up in court, charged with sexually assaulting Effy.  And whilst we should all be thankful that our fallen protagonist is heading for a prison cell and not the blood-splattered end of a psychiatrist’s baseball bat, the storyline is an irrelevant mess.  What really comes into fruition here is the music, Drew’s masterful switch between pitch-perfect croons and the occasional rhyme, proves that the solo artist has grasped this genre firmly by the balls.  If witty respite “It’s got bigger than I planned/Like that song by the Zutons, Valerie” is anything to go by, Mark Ronson should be wincing.

Whilst it may seem optimistic to have high hopes for the film currently in production (judging on self-aggrandizing calamity 8 Mile, holding your breath may result in serious injury) The Defamation of Strickland Banks is not bland or repetitive listen.  It is awash with innovation, a refreshing soul and jazz influenced break from the suffocating cement mixture of indie-synth-folk-pop currently drowning the British music scene.  It is, above all, promising that new voices are pushing their way up through the cracks.

Tom Goulding