I think the cover for this album (showing bassist Michael Bradley and drummer Bill Doherty in a restaurant in New York) is a good summation of this album – a bunch of lads from Derry who are suddenly touring the world and having a good time while they do it.
The songs try to bea bit less punky, and lean more into a pop form of New Wave, but this suits them, especially Feargal Sharkey’s voice, a lot better. The music is a tad more sophisticated in construction, the songs are much the same kind of teenage angst as their debut album with titles like The Way Girls Talk, Girls That Don’t Talk, See That Girl, and Boys Will Be Boys. All short tracks that do what they need to do, and no more.
My Perfect Cousin, the big hit, is a timeless classic, not unlike The Kinks’ David Watts, all about feeling inadequate compared to that one supposedly perfect peer. We all knew one of them, and if you didn't, it was probably you and I hate you. There’s a little bit of a Talking Heads style to the music at times – More Songs About Chocolate And Girls is surely a direct reference to the Talking Heads album More Songs About Buildings And Food, and it has a very Heads style beat to it. More Songs... opens the album, and another Talking Heads soundalike, What’s With Terry?, closes it, forming a nice bookend, and for me these were the most interesting two tracks.
The tracks do what they set out to do – provide you with a couple of minutes of fun and escapism; they may not be musically or lyrically complex, but they are infectious fun, which in itself is a great thing to give to the world.
Comments
Post a Comment