MAN & The Echo, four very political lads from Warrington, always with something interesting to say, will air songs from last November's self-titled debut album at The Basement, City Screen, York, on February 27.

Their single Operation Margarine has bagged BBC Radio 6Music plays from presenters Lauren Laverne, Shaun Keaveny and Mary-Ann Hobbs, not to mention a Steve Lamacq session. And should you be wondering, the song takes its title from an essay of the same name by literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes.

As for the band name, “The Man And The Echo is a poem by W.B. Yeats about a man who's thinking of ending his life, but when he shouts out that he's going to lie down and die, he hears the echo and argues with it, deciding that he wants to live," says vocalist and guitarist Gareth "Gaz" Roberts. "It has a personal significance. I also think it’s a really cool band name.”

Roberts can certainly relate to the other The Man And The Echo, but it was his life in music – not life itself – that he was on the brink of ending. His band of the time, Cheap Cuts, had built up a following in their hometown with their tragicomic songs about local motorway services and radio phone-ins but he sensed there was nowhere left for them to go.

A gig at London’s 100 Club was set to be his last until, like in the poem, fate intervened as the manager of the headline band came up and said, “If you change the name and write a whole new set of songs, I think I’d like to manage you”.

What's more, Roberts's wife urged him to continue. “When I was considering stopping, she said, ‘You’re crackers if you think you’re going to come home and sit still after work, or going to be able to not rehearse three times a week and do a gig at the weekend," he recalls. “This was obviously all true.”

Three years on, Roberts, keyboard player Chris Gallagher, bassist Joe Forshaw and drummer Joey Bennett have made an album that skirts numerous musical signposts. It spans The Smiths, Dexys, Pulp, Fifties and Sixties' crooning and blue eyed soul to "arrive at a sound that isn’t retro as much as ricocheting through pop’s many decades and landing squarely in the post-Brexit, conflicted, chaotic UK of the here and now".

Their politically conscious record taps into Roberts's experiences in his six years as a disability welfare rights officer, with Care Routine and The Cold Is Stronger Than You Are highlighting the difficulties faced by those in the unheard corners of society.

“You can read about the bedroom tax and people going to food banks but until you actually meet people, you’ve no idea what the catastrophic impact of a late payment can be,” he says. “When you have to do a food bank voucher for a 70-year-old man with cancer, you think ‘you really shouldn’t have to be doing this at 70'.”

Such songs have prompted 6Music presenter Steve Lamacq to call Roberts "a great northern storyteller” on a par with Jarvis Cocker, comparing their gigs with the first time he saw Pulp.

“We’re a band in the popular style,” concludes Roberts “I play guitar, so it's guitar music, with keyboards. I’m a decent singer, so I want to write good lyrics to sing. I want to read books and write songs about them, but I want to hear them on the radio. I don’t think pop music has to be a bad thing.”

Under The Influence presents Man & The Echo in The Basement, City Screen, York, on February 27, 8pm. Tickets cost £8 on 0871 902 5726, at thebasementyork.co.uk/ or on the door from 8pm.