The Professionals

★★★ SNAFU JTP. CD/DL/LP

Another campaign from the Sex Pistols’ Paul Cook and co. An on-off concern since Cook and fellow Pistol Steve Jones first mobilised them in ’79, The Professionals are currently sans Jones, but with input from a slew of guest guitarists including Billy Duffy (The Cult) and Phil Collen (Def Leppard), SNAFU’s trashy poppunk doesn’t want for verve and vitality. Pondering anarchy’s viability from a mellower place (“Grown out of anger and OD’d on luck,” sings frontman Tom Spencer on Punk Rock And A Hard Place), and detailing Cook’s accidental spiking after consuming his daughter’s hash cookies, it’s a mostly light-hearted affair channelling irreverence and spontaneity into a self-aware whole. If things start to sound a little formulaic by Never Say Never’s bolted-on chorus, there’s a winning, Joan Jett-like immediacy to M’Ashes and the Eddie Cochran-indebted Heartburn, Spencer’s voice on the latter recalling Joe Strummer.