Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

To have spent many a gig in the company of Pete Bentham and the Dinner Ladies is not going to prepare you for just how good they sound, just how wickedly delicious and note-worthy they are tasty a band when allowed the freedom to wax lyrically in an anarchistic scrumptious style.

There is so much right with I Love Here that to take it in one sitting will leave you feeling bloated with over listening, it needs to be savoured, to hit over the metaphorical head of those whose greed makes them uncaring and  not sharing, those who wouldn’t understand the irony presented to them if served on a silver spoon with a topping of sarcasm sauce for effect.

Tracks such as the gender equality asking Can A Boy Be A Dinner Lady, Don’t Listen To The Government, Hanging On A Plank, F***** and the fantastic Working For The Man all typify what the band are about. The lyrics that scream with the authority of a woman wielding the power of the bigger piece of pudding before your eyes, knowing full well that you haven’t had any afters for a month and then handing it politely and with mocking eyes in your direction, to the chump who caused you miss out for 30 days, really get beneath the skin and raise the anger up magnificently.

Working For The Man is a track and half, the pride that escapes down your ears is one in which to relish and take heed that no matter what you do for a living, no matter how free you believe yourself to be, those at the top that sometimes behave like the detested playground bully, will always have the upper hand until you say, “sorry I am not playing your game anymore.”

There have been so many versions, so many attempts to capture the magic that resides in Pink Floyd’s early opus Arnold Layne, that for the most times they fall flat, the musicians playing it take a metaphorical battering or at least a dressing down. Rarely does it get played as if with respect, even rarer does it get the type of treatment that you can feel punk sophistication oozing out of it. The idea of David Bowie performing it with David Gilmour is one to feel goose bumps appear, to hear Pete Bentham and The Dinner Ladies play it is to almost understand the gender blurring of fun, slight majestic sleaze and sex appeal that runs through each line. You can only imagine the curly haired music genius who shone too brightly would have raised a smile towards the band, for it is a piece of art.

As bonuses go, it is far more worthwhile to the soul than any banker’s pay rise or Government Minister’s pay off for making a monumental mistake.

I Love Here, you will love this.

Ian D. Hall