NME, 7/20/85: Seriously?

 Pout, pout, let it all out… "We're Southern boys with Western smiles… Our bones are thin and our lips are shrouded in mystery". Oof! The last thing you'd expect from these delicate beauties is heads-to-the-grindstone rock and roll, but damn me if it isn't right there on the first track 'Always A Flame', disproving the commonly-held belief that only beefy great lads with crop cuts like to sound like U2. 

But it shouldn't be too surprising - there's a long tradition, dating from the early '70s, of high-cheekboned darkeyed divas swathed in splash-on mystique ("I always use…Aloof") nevertheless deigning to get good honest turgid rock under their manicures. 'Cow' even sounds like one of those shiny new American jobs that are coming on the market, I'll swear they've been listening to REM or something. 

Generally, it's lumpy proficient stuff with wide screen production by John Leckie, with Michael Aston's whiny vocals predominating, like a South Kentucky John Lydon, always mannered but never grating enough to be really interesting. 

So there's 'Stephen', drifting along with languorous charm, when a whacking great rock guitar puts its nose in. There's some fetching strum along prettiness going nowhere, and a track like 'The Rhino Plasty' (after the celebrated Kenyan bar snack) is just longing to fall apart at the seams and into some fulfilling disorder, but that pedestrian big beat tightens the reins, and stifles the few interesting ideas in evidence here. Boys, my advice is, put down that Mick Ronson album and get a decent meal inside you, you'll be fine. 
 

 

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