THIS week I am devoting this entire column to my album of the year. Yes, I know it’s September but nothing will touch it. I am certain of that.

For the first time in our history the far right are chanting the name of the current prime minister, egged on by the Sun, Daily Mail, Express, Telegraph and Spectator. 

The threat of a no-deal Brexit leaves us on the verge of economic turmoil unseen since the second world war.

The divisions in our society are so deep that in some cases friends and families are no longer talking each other. And in an incredible album, a long-departed English band who barely scratched the surface of mainstream musical history in their previous incarnation over 40 — yes, 40 — years ago have come up with the literal soundtrack for the moment.

I bet most of you have never heard of the Doctors of Madness.
They were pioneers all those years ago, a surging, unique, electric violin-fuelled UK answer to the Velvet Underground: too intellectual for glam, too structured for prog, too early and eclectic for punk. I absolutely loved them and followed them all over the place in that period in 1975-76 when everyone knew something new was coming soon and no-one was quite sure what it was. 

They had a modicum of success, then one day were supported by a new band called the Sex Pistols. Singer/songwriter/front man and seven-foot blue-haired beanpole Richard “Kid” Strange summed it up: “When I saw the Sex Pistols I knew that we were finished.”
Three chords were in. Existentialist anthems set to a driving, screeching electric violin were out.

That, of course, is what’s wrong with art: the dictates of fashion can sometimes destroy a moment of brilliance.

Punk is inspirational, the soundtrack of my life and the reason I’m doing what I am now, but it was enormously bad luck for the Doctors, and after three original and inspirational albums they finally split up in 1978. Richard Strange went on to an eclectic solo career as actor, musician and writer — and then, a couple of years ago, decided to reform the band to promote a Cherry Red Records reissue of their three ’70s releases.

He’s spent his whole life being creative, so a new album was logical.

But even a diehard fan like myself is taken aback by how utterly, horribly wonderful it is. It’s called Dark Times, was released last Thursday on Cargo Records and is a kind of “K-Tel It Like It Is” compilation of everything that is wrong with the UK in 2019.

The first track, So Many Ways To Hurt You, is moody, martial and about corporate and state surveillance, so easy in the age of mobile phones and social media. The second, Make It Stop is just that — a scream of anger and defiance at current events, a call for unity in resistance.

Sour Hour is the angry, pissed militant in the bar drowning his sorrows, the opposite of happy hour, where much-cherished dreams never come true.

Walk of Shame is Durruti meets Duran Duran. I’m not sure about that one. But then we get into some soaring optimism with A Kind Of Failure and This Is How To Die, the latter a celebration of power and strength in later years.

I remember a Doctors song Fifties Kids from all those years ago: “Here we are, the fifties kids, on collision course with thirty…” Well, Strange is on collision course with 70 now and he is in the prime of his life, musically and lyrically.

Blood Brother is a back to an earlier Doctors sound with Dylan Bates’s violin taking control as original maestro Urban Blitz used to back in the day.

But the absolute sensation of the album is the title track, a brooding spoken word masterpiece, a dystopian urban landscape of pound shops and palaces, private affluence and public squalor.

Roaming gangs who “bully their way onto buses with racist sneers” and antisocial media victims like “mothers who have lost their kids and are reduced to posting pictures of cats and cakes.”

If you like rock music and consider yourself to be intelligent and progressive, Dark Times is a no-brainer purchase, available now on Cargo Records.