It's about time! In this current climate of depressed and depressing music, where the word "pop" has become synonymous with drab grey colourless tinsel-town glamour children making three minute worthless video-exercises in how low modern music can sink, the June Brides produce an eight-track mini-album (produced by John O-Neill, ex-Undertone) to blast away the dullness. They sav(i)our pop for the side of COLOUR! LAUGHTER! JOY! with their spikey sublime intoxicating tunes; following that long and luminary lineage of Buzzcocks, Subway Sect, Fire Engines et al down the cottage way.
The first side starts off with a crackingly animated instrumental - which'll make you wish you'd never died your black and started looking doomy - and SLAMS straight into "I Fall", a tumultuous impetuous expression of joy; fragile, soaring, forever bewitching. The guitars rush headlong through a tumbling waterfall of viola and vocals..."I fall, and you drag me down, no one is listening, but let's shout out loud to prove that we're alive."
(Aside: the production does seem a trifle wimpish in places, the cover's not exactly riveting and the ghost of Young Scotland occasionally raises a bleary eyebrow, still....)
....the pace continues with "Sunday to Saturday", that class(ic) first single of theirs, now impossible to find, and ends in an exhausting exhaustive exhorting extreme exhibition of (barely) unextolled evocative exhilaration - "Sick, Tired and Drunk", an anthemic paean to all those moments when you're swaying sullenly sideways. Orgasmic! Oooh, I could lie here forever, but....
Side Two: rapture! Unfettered by any commercial restraints, the June Brides jangle straight for the jugular and BITE every time.
1! The heart! "Every Conversation" shining chiming ringing singing - a remix of their other single, more finely honed incisive streamlined - the chorus melting in your mouth like week-old Anchor.
2! The throat! "Comfort" - it's those guitars again. Biting, bold, brash, harsh - nearly too cutting in their determination to shatter the nerves.
3! The neck! "Heard you Whisper" - enchanting, empathetically fresh, enraptured: guitars and voices and instrumentals weaving and interweaving around a passionate acquisition of an enchanting tune. Spicey, bright, wholesome.
4! The wrist! "Enemies" - jubilant massed ranks, invigorating vivid sparkling - a fitting climax for such a magnificent album. The legs finally give way as you find yourself swept along on a tide of exultation.
For it's sense of vision alone this must be the most essential album released in the last two years. The choice is yours.
(c) The Legend/Everett True 1985