Let’s just get this out of the way, shall we? About 99 per cent of pop is drudging twuntery assembled by blank-eyed robots who are unjustly rewarded with mountains of cash, while all my favourite bands languish and die in places like Tacoma, Washington. As someone who believes hardcore punk to be mankind’s highest artform, Lady GaGa is the antithesis of my fucking soul: she eats diamonds marinated in the tears of seraphim, I eat week-old misery on toast. I’d despise her… but she is that remaining one per cent.

It’s because she’s baffling.  ‘The Fame Monster’, being eight new tunes welded to last year’s ‘The Fame’ (where most pop muppets would tack on a tossed-off remix or two, La Gaga delves into her paranoid soul and constructs a thematic collection around new demons that have invaded her life – monsters representing her fear of, among others, sex, death, loneliness and alcohol) is as pristine as you’d expect, but has a sub-zero core of isolation and fear. In the same way as Radiohead battle computers and learn new instruments to hew their sculptures while Fuck Buttons and HEALTH discover new sonic languages, she uses pop, its producers and masks and all its artifice, as her tool of self-expression.

To hear some new tunes visit MYSPACE

To read the complete review visit NME