Album Review: The Pulsebeats - "Lookin' Out"

 

Hailing from Spain and signed to Rum Bar Records, it's perhaps not a surprise that there's a very noticeable Ramones influence hanging over this new offering from the Pulsebeats (heck, there's even a song here called She Sings Like Joey Ramone!). And let's be honest, these kind of things can go one of two ways. As this field seems to get more and more crowded by the year, there's been more than a few bands offering decidedly lazy rip-offs of the Ramones sound while others have the nous to put a twist on the formula to avoid sounding too derivative.

And I'm pleased to report that Lookin' Out is definitely one of the latter type of records - yes, you'd have to be pretty cloth-eared not to spot the Ramones influence but at least these guys are smart enough to do something a bit different with it. If anything, these guys owe just as much to the Buzzcocks' lightning fast power-pop or the Flamin' Groovies more melodic late '70s phase as they do to the obvious and it helps to keep this album on the right side of listenable. There's some good deft guitar work on here as well on the likes of Skippin' Stones and Mathilda's Rifle which doesn't hurt matters either while the spiky aggression on Hot Glue It! marks it out as an album high point.

The only slight drawback is that some of the later tunes do start to meld into one - the Pulsebeats may have their scope set wider than just being a straight-up Ramones rip-off but by the last few songs you do start to get the impression you've seen everything they have to offer and your interest does inevitably start to drop off a bit. But they've got all the signs of being a decent band here with a bit of practice and there's nothing to suggest with a bit of extra refinement next time out, they should be able to take things up another notch and deliver something that'll well and truly make us sit up and take notice.

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