Eddie Argos might have taken up singing for Art Brut’s fourth album but his weapon is still his wit.

“People always say, ‘What do you want played at your funeral?’ I thought it would be good if I could say Ice Hockey. That way, it’d be a song as well as a game.”

He’d been celebrating the end of someone else’s life when the revelation arrived.

“They played Somewhere Over The Rainbow, which was really nice but it’s not for me. I don’t want to go over the rainbow. When I die, I want to go into space.”

The benefit, I suppose, is this way he can sing at his own funeral. But the drawbacks are more pressing.

“I liked the idea of it, but having to sing it every night is becoming a bit depressing.

“I might have to stop playing it. I might have hit the wall with that.”

The man is a scatterbrain. He fires off gags and speaks quicker than he thinks. And because Ice Hockey is track number nine on Art Brut’s new record Brilliant! Tragic! punters at forthcoming shows might see Argos explode on stage. Or else just forget to play it.

Sending up his and the industry’s flaws is all part of the Art Brut manifesto. Outlined by Argos back in 2005, on the band’s debut album Bang Bang Rock & Roll, on opener Formed A Band, Argos laid out some aims: to write a song as universal as Happy Birthday and to write the song that helps Israel and Palestine get along.

Six years on from that spiky debut – labelled Art Wave by NME, alongside bands such as The Rakes and Franz Ferdinand – former Pixies’ frontman Frank Black, who had worked on third album Art Brut Vs Satan, produced the latest effort.

Black, a man with a similarly punk outlook, talked Argos into trying to sing.

“Before we went over [to Black’s studio in Salem, Oregon] I had a phone call from our manager saying, ‘He’s going to try to make you sing.’ I thought that was very weird. I thought I had been singing.”

Because it’s the fourth album, Argos confesses it’s time to start taking things seriously.

“We’ve matured, but only ever so slightly. I sing now. Well, it’s more like a stage whisper, really. That’s a new thing.”

In the studio, Black kept Argos behind when the rest of the band were sent home.

“It was as if I was naughty or something. He’d sing it to me and I’d sing it back. He’d say, ‘Try like this, try like that.’ “We should have just got him to sing it, made a Frank Black sings Art Brut album.”

The results were shocking.

“Lost Weekend was the first song we did and I thought he’d put a ringer in. I remember thinking, ‘That’s not my voice!’”

The album includes more extracts from Argos’s time at Martin Kemp Welch (not of Spandau Ballet/Eastenders fame) school, with a track about five-a-side football rules.

“I was thinking about all those clichés Americans have that girls like boys who are good at sport. That cliché is true, really. It’s just the sport that changes.”

Guns N’ Roses megalomaniac singer Axl Rose is also honoured.

“When my little brother was growing up, he loved Axl Rose, so I wrote it from the point of view of a 15-year-old. You can only appreciate Axl Rose as an adolescent: ‘That man does what the f*** he wants – that’s awesome. I’m in trouble at school – I don’t care.’”

He says the lyrics to Axl Rose are a verbatim account of a conversation Argos had with his brother after seeing Guns N’ Roses at Reading Festival last year.

Clever Clever Jazz is another slice of real life. Its lyrics are lifted from the bar in sleepy Salem where the rest of the band were sent when Argos was kept behind to sing by Black.

“Whenever we go there, they’re like, ‘Oh, the British people are back.’ We’re like funny local celebrities – not for being in a band, just for not being from Salem.

“When we played the bar to try out some new songs, I shouted out, ‘Any requests?’ and someone shouted back, ‘Play one you know.’ I laughed so much I couldn’t sing anymore. You’ll hear it on Clever Clever Jazz.”

Support comes from Brighton-based Ice Black Birds.