One thing Bob Geldof has never been short of is an opinion - which made his silence about the deaths of his former partner Paula Yates and her lover Michael Hutchene all the more intriguing. Now he's broken it in what he calls the "heightened language of music", with an album that must surely rank as one of the bleakest, most desolate ever made. Individual listeners will have to make up their own minds as to whether its venomous lyrics are justified or mean-spirited - all that can be said is that some of them are so brutally frank that they border on the embarrassing. At its best, however, Sex, Age and Death achieves a level of emotional catharsis that is truly rare in modern music. It's a messy, deeply flawed album that deserves to be heard for its sheer shock value alone.

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