Cammell Laird Social Club is the ninth album released by UK rock band Half Man Half Biscuit

Half Man Half Biscuit

Half Man Half Biscuit, often "HMHB", are an English rock band from Birkenhead, Merseyside, active since the mid-1980s, known for satirical, sardonic, and sometimes surreal songs. The group comprises Nigel Blackwell , Neil Crossley , Ken Hancock , and Carl Henry...

 in 2002.

Cammell Laird Social Club is a Working Men's Club in Rock Ferry

Rock Ferry

Rock Ferry is an area of Birkenhead on the Wirral Peninsula, England. Administratively it is a ward of the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral. Before local government reorganisation on 1 April 1974, it was part of the county of Cheshire...

, just outside the band's native Birkenhead. The title is a pun on the title of the film and album Buena Vista Social Club

Buena Vista Social Club

The Buena Vista Social Club was a members club in Havana, Cuba that held dances and musical activities, becoming a popular location for musicians to meet and play during the 1940s...

about various Cuban musicians which was a 1999 project by Ry Cooder

Ry Cooder

Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...

. This same album is referenced in the first track. Cammell Laird

Cammell Laird

Cammell Laird, one of the most famous names in British shipbuilding during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, came about following the merger of Laird, Son & Co. of Birkenhead and Johnson Cammell & Co. of Sheffield at the turn of the twentieth century.- Founding of the business :The Company...

 is the name of the company that owned the large shipyard in the band's native Birkenhead

Birkenhead

Birkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...

.

Musically, there is more country

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

 influence than previous albums. Cammel Laird Social Club also contains two spoken word pieces.

Track listing

1. "The Light at the End of the Tunnel (is the Light of an Oncoming Train)"
2. "When the Evening Sun Goes Down"
3. "San Antonio Foam Party
   Foam party
   A foam party is a social event in which participants dance to music on a dance floor covered in several feet of suds or bubbles dispensed from a foam machine....
   
   "
4. "Them's the Vagaries"
5. "If I Had Possession Over Pancake Day"
6. "The Referee's Alphabet"
7. "She's in Broadstairs
   Broadstairs
   Broadstairs is a coastal town on the Isle of Thanet in the Thanet district of east Kent, England, about south-east of London. It is part of the civil parish of Broadstairs and St Peter's, which includes St. Peter's and had a population in 2001 of about 24,000. Situated between Margate and...
   
   "
8. "Tyrolean Knockabout"
9. "Breaking News"
10. "27 Yards of Dental Floss"
11. "Paradise Lost (You're the Reason Why)"
12. "Thy Damnation Slumbereth Not"
13. "Stavanger Töestub"

Cultural references in song titles

• 1. According to the HMHB website, the light at the end of the tunnel in this context, is what one sees as approaching death.
• 5. The title is inspired by the song "If I had Possession Over Judgement Day" by the blues musician Robert Johnson.
• 6. The track contains a great number of football references, including references to the 'technical area
  Technical area
  A technical area in association football, is where a manager, other coaching personnel and substitutes are allowed to occupy during a match.The area, where people may stand or sit, includes the dugout, bench and a marked zone adjacent to the pitch....
  
  ', Zinedine Zidane
  Zinedine Zidane
  Zinedine Yazid Zidane is a retired French footballer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. Zidane was a leading figure of a generation of French players that won the 1998 World Cup and 2000 European Championship...
  
  , and the fact that cricket umpires
  Umpire (cricket)
  In cricket, an umpire is a person who has the authority to make judgements on the cricket field, according to the Laws of Cricket...
  
   are not subject to abuse
  Verbal abuse
  Verbal abuse is best described as a negative defining statement told to you or about you; or by withholding any response thus defining the target as non-existant...
  
   along the lines of "Who's the bastard in the hat?"
• 7. The title is based on "She's in Parties" by Bauhaus
  Bauhaus (band)
  Bauhaus was an English rock band formed in Northampton in 1978. The group consisted of Peter Murphy , Daniel Ash , Kevin Haskins and David J . The band was originally Bauhaus 1919 before they dropped the numerical portion within a year of formation...
  
   (1983). Broadstairs
  Broadstairs
  Broadstairs is a coastal town on the Isle of Thanet in the Thanet district of east Kent, England, about south-east of London. It is part of the civil parish of Broadstairs and St Peter's, which includes St. Peter's and had a population in 2001 of about 24,000. Situated between Margate and...
  
   is a quaint seaside resort near Ramsgate in Kent
  Kent
  Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
  
  .
• 8. Tyrol
  Tyrol (state)
  Tyrol is a state or Bundesland, located in the west of Austria. It comprises the Austrian part of the historical region of Tyrol.The state is split into two parts–called North Tyrol and East Tyrol–by a -wide strip of land where the state of Salzburg borders directly on the Italian province of...
  
   is a region of Austria
  Austria
  Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
  
  .
• 11. Paradise Lost
  Paradise Lost
  Paradise Lost is an epic poem in blank verse by the 17th-century English poet John Milton. It was originally published in 1667 in ten books, with a total of over ten thousand individual lines of verse...
  
  is an epic poem by John Milton
  John Milton
  John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
  
  , published 1667.
• 12. The title is a quotation from Thomas Hardy
  Thomas Hardy
  Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
  
  's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles
  Tess of the d'Urbervilles
  Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented, also known as Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman, Tess of the d'Urbervilles or just Tess, is a novel by Thomas Hardy, first published in 1891. It initially appeared in a censored and serialised version, published by the British...
  
  .
• 13. Stavanger
  Stavanger
  Stavanger is a city and municipality in the county of Rogaland, Norway.Stavanger municipality has a population of 126,469. There are 197,852 people living in the Stavanger conurbation, making Stavanger the fourth largest city, but the third largest urban area, in Norway...
  
   is the fourth largest city in Norway
  Norway
  Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
  
  .