"You are bound to the multinationals no matter what you buy or what you do," says Snout's frontman and songwriter Ross McLennan. "Basically we're riding on the back of the third world." 

Although McLennan is first to admit that he's tried to negotiate dodgy territory, he's certainly satisfied with the new Snout single "Got sold on heaven" - a breathy, airy spoken word pop song that sounds like it could be about slipping some PCP into the kiddie's Cornflakes, or maybe performing the impossible by reconciling the gap between the third and the first worlds, and the blind spot that generates. 

"It's about being sold on some kind of utopian idea of civilisation which just isn't going to happen," says McLennan. "So many sad-arsed, whiny musicians think you shouldn't be political about anything. I don't want to be accused of being a bleeding heart, so I try to disguise it or at least be a bit artful." 

Artful is the word when it comes to new Snout album Circle High and Wide. The Melbourne based-three piece id without peer in this country, thanks to McLennan's painstaking approach to songwriting, arrangement and production, and his approach to pop music and pop culture in general. Moving into glistening faux-'80s sheen at times, Circle High and Wide is the next step from the aptly titled The New Pop Dialogue, which was itself a smart, savvy, ‘60s-influenced work steeped in pop nous and post-modern irony. The latter catch-phrase gets a run on the new album in "99.9" a drawling description of a depressed lifestyle (diary: channel-surf, suffer nihilistic angst, snack), and it's a theme that's at the heart of Snout's musical concerns, from dumb-fun catch cries like "Hey Hey Hey" and "Random Number Generator," through to the complexity of "Flipside" and "Got Sold on Heaven." 

"It's funny that Custard are mentioned in our review," he notes. "Because I was thinking of them when I wrote ’99.9,’ and bands like us. I get tired of being ironic. I don't like being on the ball all the time - not that I am - that's why the next line in the song is about cold comfort. It's referring to irony as some kind of consolation prize, in lieu of a good life. The subtext is you're conscious of yourself, you're not able to just live for the moment... to be. As Calvin Klein might say." 

"I don't like most misanthropes," he says later. "I think it's a bad tendency." Unfortunately it seems he had little choice in the matter, being afflicted with psoriasis - a depressive skin compliant - during writing the record. Consequently Circle High and Wide, outside a few tracks like the inspirational title tune, is one of pessimism disguised in day-glo musical confection. 

"I don't want to have kids because I don't think there is a point," he says, explaining the effects of psoriasis. "I pretty much think this is the end of it. Getting up every day feeling like that - that's the feeling of this album for me... "Hey Hey Hey" is the one saying lighten up and have some fun." 

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