ALTERNATIVE PRESS

October 1995

STIFFS, INC.

Nix Nought Nothing -

SMOKING POPES

Born To Quit

APE HANGERS

Ultrasounds

And here they come, the rancid offspring of the Punks That Time Forgot, bursting through the skirting boards of an America we never imagined, set free by the light of another green day. Another one? And wed only just stopped singing 999 songs to the last.

Old farts like me can pontificate about this all day, how one band sounds like Chelsea and another, Generation X, and we can do it with bile to boot, because so few of the original punk bands were actually any good. It was the mood and the moment which mattered the most, and if the Lurkers had vanished up Johnny Moped’s bum, would anyone really have cared?

No one today, for sure. The past is a matter of archeological record, but the most faithful revival needs something of its own, and Yankpunk ‘95 has learned the lessons of the last 20 years. Your leather jacket’s dirty, but you keep your noses clean, and you can thrash and bash all you like, just make sure the melody’s up there for the morons.

Dissonance won the day in 1977, that and silly names (who would call themselves Ed Banger And The Nosebleeds today?). Now it’s the Buzzcocks who rule the roost, them and all the other frenetic songsmiths who powered their pop through punk’s immutability.

So, stiffs, inc. seriously have made the best Undertones album since Feargal went foppish—rough enough for teenaged kicks, perfect for any cousin you like. Smoking Popes steam cut of Illinois someplace, all keen tunes and sorta-sexy lyrics, a squidgy first album Squeeze without the Mock Cockney trousers; and Boston’s Ape Hangers blend the Heartbreakers’ swagger with the same sort of ragged pop sensibilitythe Police paraded before they went reggae.

So yeah, punk’s more a state of play than a state of mind here, but that’s the difference this time around, the deliberate blending of known ingredients, until the recognizable and the raw rub shoulders, and the firmer the reference points, the better the band. Green Day have made the fortune which the Buzzcocks never saw. And there’s more room at the top. (American; Capito’; ARM)

—Dove Thompson