Album Review: Mystery Girl - "Mystery Girl"

 

It's probably the oldest trick in the book I realise but it's still safe to say that if your band name includes a New York Dolls reference then it's likely to catch our attention here at Nite Songs. So yeah, it's safe to say that Big Apple natives Mystery Girl's moniker alone might just have been a key factor in drawing them to our attention.

In truth though, this self-titled album is less Johnny Thunders and more Johnny Ramone with the sugar sweet melodies, garbled Joey-style vocals and the fact that they speed through the 11 tracks here in under 25 minutes being pure bruddas territory. And to be honest, it's not bad with the likes of Lipstick Traces and the strutting Chandelier including some good Thunders/Cheetah Chrome style guitar work proving that the Dolls influence is there, it's just in the background a bit. Elsewhere the pacy Hurting Hands owes a sly nod to Holiday In Cambodia with its opening riff and Head On A Stake, Six Bends and I Love Kissing has plenty of that Ramones style knucklehead charm.

The only drawback is that while it's an enjoyable album, there's not a lot of depth to it - I mean I know some mistaken weirdos say that about the Ramones as well but while there's plenty of fun hooks and tunes here, there's nothing which quite has that key "wow, I really must listen to that again!" quality to it meaning that while I enjoyed this album on first listen, it's not one that I've really had a massive compulsion to revisit since then.

That said, when you're drawing your influence from bands as good as these guys are, it's inevitable that a little bit of the ol' stardust will rub off unless you really screw it up and make no mistake, Mystery Girl definitely offer a competent enough take on the formula. This is a solid debut album which gives the band plenty of room to grow. Touch wood we'll make glam punk gods out of them yet. 

Bandcamp Link

NITE SONGS RATING: 🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌔🌑🌑🌑 (7/10)

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Album Review: The Warner E Hodges Band - "Boots Up! The Best Of The Warner E Hodges Band So Far"

Image
  As a rule, I try to avoid greatest hits releases on this 'ere webzine but Warner E Hodges, best known as guitarist for Nashville cowpunk legends Jason & The Scorchers, was nice enough to send us a copy of this in the run-up to his UK tour starting next week. I have to be honest, even though I'm a huge Scorchers fan (a Garbage Days Revisited feature on them may be coming soon on this website) and enjoyed his work with the Georgia Satellites’ Dan Baird in Homemade Sin, I've not listened to much of Warner's solo stuff so I figured this would be a good introduction prior to going to catch the Keighley leg of the tour next weekend. To tell the truth, the majority of the stuff on Boots Up!  essentially sounds like a rockier version of the Scorchers with straight-up rockers like Right Back Where I Started  and Where You Gone  rubbing shoulders with the odd unexpected number to vary things up like the fast-paced Back In Town  and Preachin' To The Choir ,   the lurchin
Read more

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

One more last thing before we go...The Best Of 2023

Image
  Okay so the truth is...I wasn't expecting to come back to Nite Songs. I think that's pretty clear from the sign-off that I did from this webzine in February. And, if I'm completely honest, it's not something I'd honestly have the time to do nowadays. To try and cut a long story fairly short, last year a lot of things changed for me - I started a new job, became a homeowner for the first time and, suddenly, real life started to get in the way of writing this webzine. Evenings which, in the past, would've been spent writing reviews and listening to albums instead became all-too-precious opportunities to get away from the hectic nine-to-five world and shut my brain off for a few hours. And, if I'm honest, I don't really miss being a webzine editor that much. For all that I enjoyed spouting forth my opinions on the new music of today, 2023 was probably the year where I realised that actually, I'm not sure how on the pulse my finger is anymore. A lot of
Read more