Now, if it’s true, does it matter when the songs are as dementedly catchy as they are on Dirty Words? The bass pops, the guitars flex, and the drums skitter and scatter all over the shop, while vocalist David Jones monotones his way through the melodies. His voice is highly reminiscent of not Interpol’s Paul Banks, but instead the urgency of Midnight Oil’s Peter Garrett, while the song “Talkshow” – with its answering call from guitarist Lee Irons – is very reminiscent of Midnight Oil in their mid-1980s peak indeed.

There’s a nice edginess to the eleven tunes that make up Dirty Words, but there’s never so esoteric as to be off-putting – this is pop music, pure and simple. Singles like “All Mapped Out”, “Lump in My Throat” and the monolithic hooks of “Be My Enemy” are insatiable in their appetite for wedding themselves to the receptors in the brain that remember little licks like those provided by Lee Irons and Sam Harvey.

But it’s the bass that’s actually the guiding instrument for much of Dirty Words – whether it be in the insistence that it shows on “Talkshow” and “Don’t Come Any Closer” or a more reflective nature on “Arms Around Me”, “Changing Pilots”, “Time”, and the chilling closing title cut. It’s patent that the Departure are thinking about what they’re doing throughout the course of Dirty Words, and the slight variances in pace and song structures can be excused as a result of the sheer strength of the songs.