Album Review: The Sick Things - "The Sick Things"

 

Sometimes you can tell just by looking at a cover of an album that the omens are gonna be good and such is the case with Canadian scuzz merchants the Sick Things. Band named after an Alice Cooper song? Check. Signed to Yeah Right Records who also count the Black Halos and Smash Fashion among their roster? Check. Yup, this one is definitely ticking all the boxes.

So it's safe to say that when the opening track here Take The Head From The Crown kicks in on a swaggering riff that Steve Jones would no doubt happily endorse before exploding into a ferocious slash 'n' burn white knuckle ride that sounds like the bastard offspring of the Backyard Babies and early Manics, you can allow yourself a satisfied nod that this is living up to expectations. Second song Boogaloser struts in sounding like the sort of wrong-side-of-the-tracks tale of wrongdoing that bands like the Hangmen do so well before the Thin Lizzy indebted twin guitar sound of Sick Thing kicks things up another notch.

Essentially, there's not a lot in the way of surprises here but like all the best bunches of ne'er-do-well scumbags, the Sick Things are simply very good at what they do from the scowling vocals to the spiralling riffs and tight-as-you-like rhythm section. If you like the sort of proper bruises, warts 'n' all rock 'n' roll as peddled by the likes of the Dead Boys, the Hellacopters, Appetite For Destruction era G'n'R, the Sweet Things etc then you should find plenty to enjoy here from the moody Empty Castles and We Got It Figured Out to the snotty Lovesick and Ain't Got Time. All in all, this is a most enjoyable half hour demolition derby joyride through the seedier side of rock 'n' roll. Good stuff.

You can download or stream Sick Things from the Yeah Right Records Bandcamp page.

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑 (8/10)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Garbage Days Revisited #74: Silverfish - "Organ Fan" (1992)

Image
  "You can't kill what you're afraid of...are you afraid of me?"  - Silverfish  - Big Bad Baby Pig Squeal I guess the obvious place to have written something on Silverfish would have been in one of the very early Sounds From The Junkshop but I'm ashamed to admit that they were a band who, while I was sort of aware of their presence at the time, I wouldn't really properly discover until well after they'd split.  I can remember the band name from the occasions they'd pop up on the Indie Top 10 on the ITV Chart Show but it was only when their singer Lesley Rankine cropped up as a guest vocalist on Therapy? 's Troublegum album (on Lunacy Booth  and Femtex ) that I decided to try and investigate their output in a bit more detail. Only to find they'd literally split up a few months before. Bugger. Silverfish hailed from Camden in the pre-Britpop days back when it was still the grimy scuzzy end of North London and the sort of place tourists would act
Read more

Garbage Days Revisited #29: The Quireboys - "Homewreckers And Heartbreakers" (2008)

Image
  "I played my hand in a rock 'n' roll band, it was my ace, my jack and my king/I rolled the dice to see what Lady Luck would bring, salvation or sin..."  - The Quireboys  - One For The Road In a way, I'm quite surprised I haven't covered the Quireboys either on Sounds From The Junkshop or here on Garbage Days Revisited yet. Unlike a lot of bands who were slung in with the "hair metal" tag in the late '80s and early '90s, I actually was  aware of the band when they had their brief flirtation with chart success around the turn of that decade and had a couple of their singles in my collection - Hey You  on a Now compilation (which sounds incredibly incongruous all these years later!) and There She Goes Again/Misled  on cassette single. For whatever reason though, they never quite became the firm favourites of mine that their fellow Soho dwelling glam rockers the Dogs D'Amour did. I'm not quite sure why - I think I just thought the Dogs
Read more

Sounds From The Junkshop #26 - The Supernaturals

Image
  "In the great scheme of things, it doesn't matter. I'll get through it a little bruised and battered. And maybe some day I can just laugh at myself..."  - The Supernaturals , Pie In The Sky , 1997 Written off at the time as the point where the Britpop movement essentially ate itself whole and paved the way for alternative music to get a lot more serious and dark and a lot less fun under Thom Yorke, the Supernaturals are, to my mind, a band who deserve re-appraisal. Or at least their debut album does anyway. After that, they kind of lost their way a bit...but we'll come to that later. I first heard of the band when their first Top 40 hit Lazy Lover  (ironically one of the weaker songs on their debut album) cropped up on a Shine compilation back in the day (ah the joys of 1996). It didn't really grab me but the follow-up The Day Before Yesterday's Man  did and this was the one which did reel me in. The Day Before Yesterday's Man  is pretty much the Sup
Read more