Prolific Wellingtonian Vorn Colgan, and his team of merry pranksters, always leave the impression that they’re so full of clever ideas there’s never quite enough room or time to get them all down on one record. Album number seven, ‘More Songs About Girls And The Apocalypse’, is fair brimming with wry observational humour, smart social commentary, and the usual Vorn-sized portions of self deprecation.

Out on Powertool Records, ‘More Songs’ is yet another example of Vorn’s predilection for thumbing a nose in the face of convention. This time out we range from the Sgt Pepper-esque chamber pop of opener Flint And Tinder, to the warped synth-pop of Drowning Kittens (featuring Anna Edgington), all the way across multiple styles to the Celtic flavours of This Is What. We even get a variation on hip hop, and some plain old fashioned guitar-driven pop.

You never quite know what’s coming next. There’s plenty of violin, there’s trumpet, double bass and that wonderful piece of technology called the Kaossilator, yet somehow the music almost feels peripheral at times, such is the dizzying appeal of the lyric sheet. And while the very funny and hopefully-not-autobiographical, The Story of My Fucking Life, perhaps offers us the best illustration of that, I find it hard to go past Repentance Song, which coughs up this little gem: “I have strayed and I have sinned, I can’t even touch myself because I don’t know where I’ve been, my straight and narrow’s bent and stretched beyond repair.” Yes, well, quite.