Guitarist Paul Jones was honoured when he was asked to join the reconstituted line-up of spiky guitar outfit Elastica.

The band were once barely out of the headlines thanks to singer Justine Frischmann's now defunct romance with Blur frontman Damon Albarn.

There's been a five-year lull since the debut album, with the band's new-look being confirmed only once founder member Donna Matthews finally left last year.

Now Elastica have expanded to a six-piece by recruiting Paul on guitar and Mew on keyboards and backing vocals.

Both feature on the band's long-awaited second album - and Paul is particularly excited by the collaboration with The Fall's Mark E Smith on the track How He Wrote Elastica Man.

"It's great to be playing guitar with his voice coming out of the speakers," he said.

That and a bizarre cover version of Trio's 1982 hit Da Da Da are among the highlights of the album, called The Menace, which is out this week.

"It was nothing to do with me! Justine liked it and got a Casio drum machine to do it on. It's not as cheesy as the original," said Paul.

The new-look Elastica are on tour to promote the album, with a gig lined up tomorrow at The Cockpit in Swinegate, Leeds. And they are also on the bill for the Carling Weekend at Temple Newsam in Leeds in August.

Critical reaction to the new Elastica material has been positive so far, even though it has little obvious commercial potential.

"It's probably got a few people worried. Justine's quite adamant it should be like that. We don't want to be competing with Stereophonics and Travis.

"I think Justine had in her mind that she wanted to branch out a bit after the first album, which sounds very much like a first album.

"The influences were very obvious - punk stuff like Wire and The Stranglers. This time there's everything from The Fall to David Bowie and Eno tracks on there."

And Paul is encouraged by how Elastica's first release as a six-piece went down. "We did have a six-track EP out. It sold very well considering it had no promotion and was very low-key," he said.

Simon Ashberry

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