Mike Skinner returns as The Streets come back for a third outing with the latest release The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living. Skinner is without a doubt one of the latest pop stars to do his growing up in public and we’ve seen this reflected in the material across his three releases. The savvy bedroom build craftsmanship of Original Pirate Material which saw many herald him as a new urban poet armed with intricate wordplay and a ramshackle collation of beats and basslines which drew from any number of sources.

A Grand Don’t Come For Free followed on with a little more ambition. Skinner still doing what he does best and telling the listener about the world he knows. Only for the second outing there was almost a ‘concept album’ theme of continuity running through the assembled stories which went on to make up a greater whole.

So with this third album we have an unofficial trilogy, a bit like Star Wars really. Mainly in the sense that we now say goodbye to the innocent Mike Skinner of yesteryear and welcome in ‘Dark Mike’ who has now been around the celebrity block a bit. The tales of a herbal persuasion have been replaced with the more clinical styling of a man who has taken a liking to coke.

The gift for wordplay is without a doubt still in place, but the innocence is undeniably gone. It was of course unavoidable, like others before him (Jarvis Cocker being a particular example that springs to mind) Skinner pulls tightly from the world around him and this album finds him a world away from the one he inhabited. If anything the album does illustrate something about fame to in the sense that there is a swagger and arrogance to the songs that simply wasn’t present (or necessary) in his earlier recordings. Don’t get me wrong this doesn’t make this collection a bad thing. After all Skinner’s honesty paints a bleak but strangely compelling picture in tracks such as ‘Prangin’ Out’ and the recent single ‘When You Wasn’t Famous’. He talks about his celebrity expenditure and his narcotics consumption coming across as someone who is already tiring of the process. But in other instances he does seem to descend into pointless ramblings that make you wonder what conditions and influences were like during the recording and writing process (‘You Can’t Con An Honest John’).

Musically the production values on the album are a lot harder than their precursors. The sounds behind the words are in many cases a lot pricklier than we are used to but in most cases it seems to be appropriate. There are instances where ‘Old Mike’ makes reappearance in proceedings. ‘Never Went To Church’ is doubtless single material and mines from the same vein as “Dry Your Eyes’ with its gentle piano refrain and sentimentality. As far as albums go this is by no means the best you can expect from The Streets but I suspect it’s only a blip in quality control. The Hardest Way almost sets itself up as a Skinner’s pre rehabilitation album, the stories of excess he extols now could quite easily be his regrets one or two albums down the line.

For now though it’s ‘Dark Mike’ who rules the roost and in conclusion this is a passable release but by no means a classic.