Frontman Jamie Manners delivers bitingly misanthropic spoken-word monologues in a strong Ulster accent (on their last album he even managed to rhyme 'fame' with 'coliseum'). Keyboardist Andrew Chilton provides minimalist Casio back-up and glowers with an intensity that makes Ron Mael from Sparks look like a C-Beebies presenter. Yet, somehow, they manage to pull it off.

White Elephant, their third album, is bookended by the most extreme manifestations of the two contributors. Opener Death Of A Mummy's Boy is an eight-minute first-person account of a carefully-planned suicide with no trace of a tune. Closing track The Teams That Meet In The Blue Lagoon is an insipid, grating Bontempi instrumental. It's as if The Vichy Government have put a vicious guard dog at each end of the album to deter unwary listeners; but thankfully there are plenty of thrills in between. Cheap, vindictive, vicious thrills; but thrills nonetheless.

If there's a concept to White Elephant, it's the Hogarthian portrayal of modern urban life in its vapid, rampantly consumerist, hollow, violent ingloriousness. More than on previous albums, Manners makes his case via disturbing condensed narratives, the best of which play like mini Jacobean tragedies.

The Exterminating Angel of Greek Street sees an embittered Soho strip joint barman poisoning the drinks; and wiping out Channel 4 executives, strippers, and all. Poor Little Chelsea Fan follows a swaggering exec from the executive box at Stamford Bridge and into his BMW, which promptly breaks down on a Haringey council estate. Soon, thanks to a pack of pissed-up rival fans, the pavement is spattered with "speckles of blood like the balsamic vinegar on the rocket you had for lunch". Tristana imagines a Humbert Humbert figure burdened with a mocking Lolita for life, as he passes into pathetic dotage.

Chirpy, huh? And there's dead-on an hour of this. Yet the whole enterprise is continuously saved from utter bleakness by both the perky Man-Machine-era Kraftwerk synths and the bone-dry hilariousness of Manners' turn of phrase. The gems flow thick and fast when emanating from the mouths of morally compromised narrators; like the Hampstead public schoolboy who invents a life of maltreatment (Abusive Childhood Narrative) purely in order to sells books: "All I got for Christmas was a black banana / Next to mine Dave Pelzer’s youth was Club Tropicana." Or the sadistic sleazebag in My Mail Order Bride: "I bought her on eBay for £2.99 / She’s subhuman but she’s all mine".

Not only is the writing excellent, but the listener is constantly kept on their toes as to where the moral centre of these tales lie: these are no simple rants. Manners' flat faux-naif delivery allows him to make all kinds of outlandish statements without every being clear whether these are heartfelt, ironic, or just Situationist provocation.

Only on Amnesia Day does he really wear his heart on his sleeve: "If you go singing at the Proms or bask in British pride / Then you’re endorsing rape; you’re celebrating genocide". But again, the bile is sweetened with black comedy: on the same song dubious patriot Morrissey is amusingly accused not only of senility, but also of being a "ready-made replacement for the Queen Mum".

Picture the scene: it's a cold rainy London day; you've just been soaked to the skin as a speeding BMW full of braying toffs ploughs into the puddle next to the bus stop; you spend the whole bus journey with your face wedged into the armpit of a sweaty bald cockney in an England shirt; and when you finally get home you remember you left your door keys at work. So, what are you going to shuffle your iPod to? The Vichy Government.

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