Example: The Evolution of Man – review

Judging by the readers' comments, Example gained few buddies in a recent Guardian interview. However the consensus – that the Fulham singer/rapper is an disagreeable hardnut – might be overturned by his fourth album, which is loaded with gloomy soul-searching. It's& virtually a solution document to his 2011& album, Enjoying within the& Shadows, which partied until it was sick, yielding two No 1 singles in the course of. The Evolution of Man is extra sombre: minor-key melodies flicker bleakly and& grinding guitar riffs – some played by Blur's Graham Coxon – exchange the electro knees-ups, while Example enumerates his sins: drug abuse, infidelity, you identify it. Snakeskin is another queasy grunge howl that has the singer sounding eerily like Kurt Cobain and confessing he's "never felt snug in my pores and skin". On the rap-metal Come Taste the Rainbow, he claims to have Asperger's. All in all, it is& not a lot fun, but to depart so dramatically from his& earlier sound is a brave transfer.