If possible, please leave criticism in your comments so that I can improve!!
If possible, please leave criticism in your comments so that I can improve!!
Member since:28.05.2003
Reviews:63
Members who trust:12
Wow i can't believe this album has been out for many a year and no-one has reviewed it! Spunge are one of my all-time favourite bands, hailing from our very own sunny shores of Britain, and are a ska oriented punk rock band. Ska oriented as opposed to ska as they dont use That many trumpets, but they do use of lots of upstrumming on the offbeat for their rhythm guitar. Punk rock as opposed to punk because they don't offer any sort of political message, just good clean old-time feel-good hits! Whilst they only have three albums, this one being their first, this one still stands out very strongly from the other two, featuring some of their most classic songs, such as Lyrical Content, Idols, and of course, Kicking Pigeons. The several times that I've seen them play live, these songs still go down a treat with the crowd. The tracklist is 1. Lyrical Content 2. Idols 3. Kickin Pigeons 4. Roving Eye 5. Angel With A Pint Glass 6. Make Me Happy 7. Ode To Slimey Bassless 8. Whitehouse 9. Kiss My Face 10. Sleazoid 11. Freak 12. Whinger. As you can see, the songs that I think are the strongest on the album are the first three, which means the album kinda peaks early. Songs such as Make Me Happy and Whitehouse aren't very memorable, they're enjoyable to listen to at the time but aren't anything special. Roving Eye and Kiss My Face are both catchy, but perhaps not in a very good way! Angel With A Pint Glass is a nice song, its a slow song, as close as spunge will ever get to a ballad I imagine. It talks about a mysterious girl that has ruined the singer's life, with the song title ironically including two of my spunge's demographic's loves - beer and girls.
For the most part though, the songs on this album, are all so happy and jolly that you can't help but smile, and sing along if you know the words! Spunge aren't exactly lyrical masterminds, but then they never claim to be, as they say on Lyrical Content 'you don't need a PhD. to understand what I mean!', and the music is so feel-good that lyrics are not as important to the overall track as on other types of work. They don't exactly offer any pearls of wisdom, but with songs as upbeat as this, who needs deep meaning?
I really like the artwork on the front of the album, the cartoon features little characters and events as told in some of the songs, and you can just see the band performing through the window of a building. This links well with their next album, where the view is from inside that building and you can just see the outside.
One bad point about this album compared to their later albums is that some of the songs really are quite weak comparitively, and these come towards the end, so once you've listened past the first half, it can be tempting to change the CD. However, they are all definitely worth a listen, and for the CD as a whole, the classic songs definitely balance out the less popular ones. I do recommend this, but possibly as a follow-up purchase to the rest of their catalogue.
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Jan 18th, 2006
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