In the past lazy comparisons to Nirvana and Hole have followed the band since they first caught the eye of the music media after forming less than three years ago. However, whereas Ms Love is now playing the media game with a storage van's worth of award ceremony costumes, angry, awkward newcomers Cay are kicking out stunning heavy guitar tunes, capturing the thoughts of anyone who will listen with their spiky energy laden and articulate songs. This, their debut album, certainly proves that Cay have all they need to carve out a name for themselves, as if providing the quality that Hole's third album failed to live up to, but making it stunningly ten times better.

Front woman Anet Mook, described by Mr Steve Lamacq as "sounding as if her heart and lungs are about to explode at the same time," sounds as though she were born with guitar attached, token whisky glass and cigarette in hand. Her voice is one of the most entrancing, hypnotic-like, qualities of the album as it dances between being seductively serene and intensely coarse also bringing a prescription of phlegmy blues to each track, making the lyrics more believable and emotions more credible.

As the grinding, jagged lines of Evening Session championed single Neurons like Brandy jump out of the speakers and hit you smack in the centre of your head, it comes as no surprise that limited copies of said single are now exchanging hands for up to £50. Giving a sense of post-grunge the agitated and excitable guitars provide an adrenaline-fuelled ride through Anet's stirring pot of emotions and scars. Reasonable ease in chilled out conditions grabs you by the jugular as the emphatic guitars perforate your skull and reverberate round your mind, as if the whole band are careering round on a hearty sugar high. As it winds to a close, it starts calming down as if reflecting on it's own startling energy. It in fact cuts into silence halfway through and into what sounds like the band tuning up in a French train station, giving a real feel of the music's schizophrenic nature as it melds into the album's final track.

As you reach this final track, the tenderness of Speed 13 provides the 'coming down' of your trip through pure musical exuberance, as if from an amphetamine experiment. Reflecting back on an album which almost seems to burst out of it's own seams, all of the choking, spitting, ripping, snarling and roaring have now been tamed into an extremely emotional intense beast which now sits curled by the fire. Just remember if Cay's bite is as full on as its bark, your going to get more than a scratch on your arm.

The full on vicious attack of Princes and Princesses is a perfect example of Cay's incessant urgency that propels the album. As Anet roars "You and me we're gonna screw, gonna screw everyone out there yeah And you will come, Into the, Into the road and I'll drive the car," you know it's going to be hard to not want to jump out there and join the ranks for Cay's rebellious attack on the world.

That's one of the endearing qualities of Cay; they've risen above the well documented and sung about teenage angst and rebellious tendencies, and their message is for and against everyone and should be hammering out of your CD player - buy this album now!

9/10 Dawn Hoskin

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