How many horrendously over-hyped bands can you name who have managed to release three decent records? Few, I’d wager, but that’s exactly what we have with The Soft Pack. Upon their arrival (originally under the excellent name The Muslims) they were spoken about in terms so superlative it was as if Jesus had returned and formed a Stooges covers band. Cleverly, they seemed to just completely ignore everything anyone was saying about them, kept their heads down, and rocked out. It’s lead to people giving far less of a toss about them as we enter the business end of 2012, but as they’d already proved, The Soft Pack’s sound is not something that pays much attention to whether loads of people are listening, or none.

As such, they aren’t particularly concerned with changing much of their way of going about things on Strapped, though there are a few more colours on their palette courtesy of the welcome arrival of the occasional synth flourish or programmed drum loop. But what you get with Strapped is, by in large, what you’ll have got from each of their previous records – just really bloody cool, no nonsense guitar rock, with great verses and even better choruses, all delivered with a precision that contrasts brilliantly with the still-present feeling that they’re really not bothered about anything, ever. They’re excellent at it.

As with each of their records, it follows the pattern of having two numbers which will be your absolute favourites, despite the rest of it still ranging from passable to very good. There’s another hell of an opener (the thrashy fun fun fun of ‘Saratoga’ making clear from the start that over-thinking things is not the order of the day here), and a career high thus far in the instantly memorable swagger of the excellent ‘Bobby Brown’. The aforementioned synthesiser twinkles and new-found flair for seductive grooves are at their most prominent here, making it the one moment where the record differs significantly from those which came before it. I listen to it as I write this, happy in the knowledge that it’ll subsequently reside in my head for days.

Elsewhere, it’s all a bit… Soft Pack, really. This is no bad thing, but also nothing truly remarkable if you’ve a familiarity with their previous records. It’s certainly worth owning one of them, but – and I say this as a fan – probably not all. Strapped, however, is as good a place as any to start. Yes, there’s an inevitability to the way a song like ‘They Say’, with its naggingly catchy verses of scratchy, reverb-laden guitars and mammoth rollicking chorus, is going to play out, but that’s also what makes it all so likeable. Other successes like ‘Chinatown’ and ‘Tallboy’ fare similarly well – whilst it’s certainly not dumb music, it asks little of you other than that you have yourself a fine time, and makes that very easy to do.

Admittedly, it would be simpler still to do this if presented with a little more variation, and if the record didn’t suffer from a final-third tail off that leaves its back end almost thoroughly unmemorable: those who can, without listening to the album, tell the difference between ‘Oxford Avenue’ and ‘Head On Ice’ and using recollection alone are superfans who should be awarded medals. But even so, it resoundingly refuses to suck, and in its best moments makes you think that no matter what witch house, dubstep or afrobeat might be being lauded today by whichever music hacks started going nuts over The Soft Pack in the first place, rock and roll is still just about the coolest kind of sound the world has ever seen.

Listen to Strapped