Saucy Haulage Ballads by Half Man Half Biscuit

Saucy Haulage Ballads, a six-track EP that Half Man Half Biscuit put out on Probe Plus in August 2003, is the Birkenhead band doing what they do best: taking the stuff of British pop culture and everyday life and twisting it into sardonic, surreal little songs. Nigel Blackwell sings and writes with a deadpan eye for the absurd, backed by Neil Crossley's bass, Ken Hancock's guitar and Carl Henry's drums, and the tunes gallop along with a scrappy, knowing jangle.

The titles alone tell you the sense of humour at work, with "Tending the Wrong Grave for 23 Years" and "It Makes the Room Look Bigger" the ones that caught on. Julie Burchill found echoes of the finale of Lindsay Anderson's 1968 film if.... in "Blood on the Quad", and a Stylus critic argued that its six songs held more ideas than plenty of bands produce in their lifetimes.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.