Kurt Wagner must have spent many a day at his former job, laying tiles and floorboards, wondering why the hell he bothered. Taking off his trademark trucker cap to wipe his brow. Sitting there with a pie or burger at lunchtime (or a sandwich from home if things were tight), looking out the window at another day passing him by. Probably, especially if it was a Friday, thinking about the coming weekend’s booze-up in his basement. All sixteen members of Lambchop (or as many who could be bothered) showing up to chain smoke their way through three heart attacks and even more heartaches (courtesy of Wagner’s simply worded kitchen sink dramas).

But now – in what must be one of popular music’s most bizarre simple twists of fate – he has found himself at home all day writing songs for a living, even commissioned to score the music for a German silent film of seventy-odd years ago (Thom Yorke mustn’t have answered his phone that day). So what’s a former blue collar worker to do but work, right? A song a day, he said, for six months. And so, when Lambchop told their label they wanted to release two records instead of one you can’t imagine there were many raised eyebrows around the boardroom table.

Aw C’mon / No You C’mon is the perfect title for a band whose demeanour is so working class that you should be able to smell the sweat in their denim as Wagner leans forward to croak his way through another tale of disheartened or distracted men. Holed up downstairs with their ashtrays, tacky Catholic souvenirs, large hairy dogs and cheap beer, Lambchop have created another dialogue of modern life as narrated by nobody in particular. By you or me, even. It is a lo-fi call and response (now sounding even more professional thanks to their growing fan base, despite the persistent loser sentiments) as reflected in the mirror titles. You can’t help but feel that Wagner is trying to downplay the beauty of his band’s music with such a colloquial branding. They should come off like ACDC or Kid Rock. It’s a miracle, then, that you think instead of Kurt Weill (“Women Help to Create the Kind of Men They Despise”) and even Kurt Cobain (“Nothing Adventurous Please”) and realise that Kurt Wagner, God bless him, has no idea how to make a marketable album.

It may annoy me at times, ten years after hearing their debut album, that Lambchop still sound like Lambchop always did – but then we don’t deny The Ramones, Billy Bragg or even Bob Dylan (say) that right. Because, hell, no one sounds like Lambchop. They, through chief songwriter Wagner, have virtually cornered the market in what it is to be shiftless and (idly) thinking about it in today’s oft-depressing world. Because they (and yes, I mean Wagner) are not poor nor rich nor without prospects. Just existing at a level that most of us are, trying to get by with enough reason to see another day.

That struggle is spread across these twenty-four tracks. And the fact that it is so beautiful and rich only confirms the class Lambchop have always hinted at. It may not be cool, true, and youth radio may just sniff its nose at it. But when you get to that age when share-house living seems a bit too juvenile and tedious, Lambchop’s songs hit you after midnight and reassure you that life can mean something more than rent and phonebills. You just have to get through the shit to see the rainbow, that’s all.