AS overnight sensation stories go, this one isn't bad.

A dirt-cheap DIY debut is recorded on a knackered laptop in a former 24-hour cab office in Staines.

Before West London four-piece Hard-Fi have time to check if Netto has closed so they can stock up on rocket-fuel cider, Radio 1 and legendary US producer Rick Rubin are on the blower and phrases such as era-defining are being banded about in a flurry of hyperbole.

Signed to Atlantic, Stars Of CCTV was then re-jigged with more cash, but the results are still staggering.

Comparisons with The Clash and Specials are obvious: Hard-Fi's currency is bleak, suburban alienation, tinged with ska, dub and classic rock.

But while Terry Hall drew vividly on Thatcherite nothingness spewed up in late 70s Coventry, Hard-Fi frontman Richard Archer traps the desolation of Blair's urban wasteland in a rusty cage, wraps it in a Burberry hoodie, then slaps on an ASBO.

The result is a cocky, tower-block triumph of dole-queue funk punk. The epic Tied Up Too Tight recalls Strummer in London Calling pomp, while the immense glam anthem Cash Machine makes being skint seem a reasonably sane proposition. And the spy cam-berating title track is the best working-class anthem since Weller told us exactly what entertainment was. Wicked, as Staines' most famous son, Ali G, would no doubt proclaim. Go buy.

If the Mercury Music Prize-nominated Hard-Fi reportedly head the so-called ska revival, The Ordinary Boys are its illegitimate offspring.

They called the album Brassbound; and Brassbound, dictionary definition 'entrenched and unchangeable', it most certainly is.

Locked in a timewarp where The Jam's most dreary B-sides are on constant repeat and Fred Perry shirts line pavements, this is leaden and predictable.

Where Hard-Fi excite, enrage and thrill, Ordinary Boys peddle the mundane, and formulaic.

Updated: 09:00 Thursday, July 21, 2005