Although they technically belong in the same “post-punk” bracket as The Fall, The Undertones are almost diametrically opposite, with tight playing and a commercial sound fronted by Feargal Sharkey’s distinctive vibrato.
Sharkey these days is busy being an activist for water quality, but here he’s a young lad from Belfast bursting onto the post-punk scene. The tracks are short, mostly 30 seconds one side or the other of 2 minutes, and the Undertones follow in the footsteps of the American punks in that their songs reflect the Fifties teeny bopper scene, even down to backing harmonies that border on do-wop.
Teenage Kicks is to The Undertones as Ever Fallen In Love is to Buzzcocks, the one track that follows them forever, and it’s roughly typical of what to expect – songs of teenage angst about girls and summer. Their next hit on the album, Jimmy Jimmy, is a darker affair underneath, about a sensitive soul who it’s strongly hinted attempts suicide because he can’t cope with the world.
The stand-out track for me is True Confessions, unlike anything else on the album. It uses the mechanical pulsing rhythms of the likes of Kraftwerk and runs post-punk vocals over the top in a way that’s looking towards the Eighties and the musical style of bands like Visage and ABC.
Largely, though, The Undertones take what was a disposable form of music, teen pop/rock, and runs it through another disposable form of music, punk. The resulting punk-pop is eminently listenable, and has proven to be surprisingly enduring for what it is, and again I think some of this comes from Sharkey’s voice. The mixing on this album is really good as well, with some good solidity coming through from the rhythm section without becoming muddy, with enough crispness from the melodic section without becoming tinny – both being common pitfalls in punk/post-punk recordings.
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