Nite Songs

  So here we go - the inaugural Nite Songs Top 50 Albums of the Year. And what a bloody weird year it’s been... Twelve months ago I was genuinely convinced that I was done with music journalism for the foreseeable future. Pure Rawk, the webzine I wrote for at the time, had just gone into prolonged hibernation (soon to emerge though hopefully...) and I'd also just moved back to my native Bradford after a decade living in the south east. The plan was that I was going to get out and start living again, start going to gigs as a fan and enjoying them for what they were, finally get a new band of my own going seven years after the last one split up, learn to enjoy life as a music fan again really. And then Covid happened. Gigs stopped. In fact, social life as a whole pretty much stopped. Bang went the idea of starting a new band, of going to gigs, of pretty much doing anything really as I also lost my job as the company I worked for cut costs (thankfully my spell on the dole would only l...

  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 ano...