PAUL Paul Heaton has never got the credit he deserves: discuss.

With the brilliant Housemartins, Hull's more-workmanlike Smiths, he was the often-overlooked Morrissey for people who preferred news to poetry; his next band, The Beautiful South, were the comedy-drama to his previous group’s kitchen-sink realism, selling millions but still having the potential to come third in a Beautiful South Lookalike Contest.

If this bothers someone who, pound-for-pound, is among the most intelligent British songwriters of the past 50 years, you doubt he’d ever show it.

But regardless of his personal talent, there’s an argument that he works best with his Beautiful South bandmate Jacqui Abbott, whose husky vocals contrast so well with Heaton’s yelp and who seemingly has the ability to smooth and ground his avalanche of ideas and themes.

Their third album as a duo is, in its approach and subject matter, about as predictable as Boris Johnson going off-brief on a foreign trip, but it demonstrates just how good this pair are at writing songs above love and heartbreak (I Gotta Praise, She Got The Garden, Love Makes You Happy) that you can relate your life to, not just your daydreams.

Where Crooked Calypso falters is in its political, social, and religious material, which Heaton is capable of being far stronger on than he shows here.

The Fat Man is as clumsy in addressing obesity as The Beautiful South's 36D was in tackling pornography; The Lord Is A White Con sounds like something from the dark-web version of Bugsy Malone and, as an Irish anthem, Blackwater Banks is more Daniel O’Donnell than The Pogues, lacking the smart geographical-reference touch that Heaton employed on Rotterdam and Pretenders To The Throne.

Droll, deft, sometimes deep, often disjointed, Crooked Calypso’s songs echo an impressive past that they can’t quite live up to, but they also show two artists who clearly love working with each other still sounding vibrant, still with something to say, and still refusing to slow up or calm down.