Labels: Snuffy Smile
Review by: Andy Malcolm
The album cover is some take on a Clash record or so I hear. What would I know? What would I care? Old punk rock is a pile of elephant dung, I don’t know who in their right mind would ever listen to it. Still, I guess if it wasn’t for the originators, the style would never have evolved, so perhaps we should all give thanks at the church of old punk. Which reminds me, did you ever play that computer game Rebelstar on the ZX Spectrum? At the time, the names meant nothing to me (I was 7 years old!), but there were several characters in the game – Leon Trotsky, Topper Henley, Billy Bragg, Sid Vicious. Ah! But now I am in the knowledge that the game’s writer, Julian Gollop, was a punk rock fan. Which just makes that game even more of a classic. Actually, I’m gonna load it up on the ole rubber keyed beast this minute. Got the plug, the aerial, turn it on, fiddle with the tuning. Fuck me, there it is! The old Speccy startup screen, not seen the real McCoy for years. Rocking. Took me a while to find the old ear lead and a tape recorder to connect to it, but I’ve typed load “” and it’s now loading. Must be nearly loaded now. Shit! Tape loading error! Try again. It’s loaded! It’s loaded. Difficulty level 8 please, it has more troops in it.
Right, I went through all that because I haven’t got too much to say about this SFR album. Good as it is, it’s also pretty non-descript. 11 songs of upbeat sounding, rocking, melodic punk that takes a few elements of Texas Is The Reason, plays them a bit faster, gets a bit punkier, has strained Japanese vocals, and just ploughs it’s path for 30 minutes. It’s a good listen, 3 or 4 of the songs are truly great, but it’s not the breakthrough I was expecting after that song on the split with Hot Water Music, just more of the same as was on their baby CD release from last year.
Good, but nowhere near as damn awesome as Rebelstar.