Vegas Water Taxi - Things Are Gonna Be Alright (expanded edition) (2025) Hi-Res

There’s something endearingly scruffy and self-aware about Vegas Water Taxi’s debut, Things Are Gonna Be Alright—an album that stares down the barrel of existential burnout, doomscrolling, and post-brexit fatigue, all while managing a smirk. Originally self-released in late 2023, the record now resurfaces as an expanded edition via the team at PNKSLM, with five extra live tracks from a raucous Brixton Windmill set.

Ben Hambro, formerly of Lazarus Kane, leads with a voice that can’t quite decide if it’s confessing or sniping. Sounding more Mark Eitzel or Lloyd Cole, he’s less interested in cool detachment than the awkward cringe between sincerity and self-mockery. While the current crop of post-punk narrators stare blankly into the void, Hambro stares into a bowl of breakfast shakshuka and wonders if the skinny dog at the opposite table has a better outfit.

‘Creative Director Blues’ immediately sets the tone with a scene that lyrically skewers creative industry pretensions as it slowly unravels into a quietly panicked suburban malaise. “Salomons on his feet, our lord and protector,” Hambro deadpans, before offering up the cultish mantra “Love me, hold me, feed me”, to a generation stuck between self-branding and burnout. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, but there’s a flicker of something more bruised beneath it. You half expect a shrugging Steve Coogan to wander in halfway through the chorus.

Vegas Water Taxi’s emotional balancing act continues on ‘Dog Race’ a hilarious but cutting internal monologue about social envy, foodie culture and the passive dread of becoming irrelevant in your own life. “Goddam that dog’s got a nicer jacket than me,” Hambro sneers, capturing the surreal indignity of modern aspirations in one throwaway line. Musically, it recalls the colloquial looseness of Pavement with a blush of Television Personalities’ kitchen-sink charm, all slightly warped by Hambro’s fatigue.

Fair warning: for some, ‘Six Music Dads’ will sting a little—even as you’re bobbing your head to its ‘catchy intro’. It takes the piss out of both itself and its audience. A risk that pays off, because of the familiar titular caricature. Lines about ageing indie blokes who work in IT, reliving their youth through Fontaines D.C. gigs, are delivered with just enough warmth to feel inclusive—but not enough to let anyone off the hook.“Take it all down, my son” becomes a strange sort of mantra—part warning, part surrender, part invitation to dance on the ruins. Next, ‘Twenty Year Cycle’ pushes the point further. A six-minute slowcore lament to repetition and recycled taste, namechecks Lauren Laverne and Steve Lamacq as its whispering, dissonant feedback and clattering jangle evoke the weary frustration of genre deja vu:

“Well they said post-punk was dead / They cut off, cut off the head / But when i, when i checked / You were still, still talking”

But it’s not all piss-taking. ‘Get Clean’ offers a stark, irony-free portrait of addiction, recovery, and the slow erosion of self-worth. “And I don’t feel like a living thing / When it’s one step forward, and two steps back,” Hambro confesses, his voice hollowed out, all sarcasm stripped away. It’s the album’s keystone—where the biting humour falls away and something more fragile is left exposed. Even the more oblique ‘Jukebox’ feels like a sigh from another room, where playlists do the talking that friends no longer can—lonely, but strangely tender.

Elsewhere, ‘Modern Love’ reflects intimacy through the cracked black screen of millennial dating. It’s funny, filthy, and surprisingly warm-hearted: “We fumble in the dark while we find the spark / Of why we fuck each other.” The mundanity of Percy Pigs and petrol station flowers collides with real yearning, suggesting that not all is lost in our race to commodify everything, and something honest can still fight its way out of the algorithm’s grip.

With its first vinyl pressing, PNK SLM turn this reissue into a considered restaging of a moment that already carries quiet weight in the underground’s recent memory. The expanded live tracks — particularly ‘Birkenstocks’ and the Windmill renditions of ‘Creative Director Blues’ and ‘Modern Love’— really add something to this release. They’re sloppier, louder, and sometimes more affecting. You can hear the crowd react to specific lines, the band stretching out passages with a looseness that speaks to their confidence as a live act. Production throughout is clean but unfussy, thanks to Louis Milburn (Folly Group) and mastering by Aussie DIY legend Mikey Young. There’s a nice balance between grit and polish that critically let the human elements through, with enough clarity to let Hambro’s barbed missives land cleanly.

In a year already heavy with comebacks and overstuffed deluxe editions, Things Are Gonna Be Alright (Expanded Edition) doesn’t pretend to be a magnum opus. It’s a document of a band figuring it out in real time — sly, occasionally profound, and endlessly quotable.

You might laugh. You might cry. Either way, you’ll recognise yourself somewhere in this mess and you might be afraid to like it.