Album: Pink Grease

This Is for Real, Mute

If such brazen Seventies revivalists as the Scissor Sisters can turn a tawdry trick or two in today's pop marketplace, there's no reason why Sheffield's Pink Grease shouldn't be able to effect a comparable raid on the public consciousness, drawing as they do upon similarly ripe influences from slightly later in that decade. The swaggering opener "Remember Forever" contains most of the things required from great rock'n'roll, yoking together raw garage-punk guitars, whining synthesiser and a Fifties-ish vocal hook to form a jagged psychobilly cruiser. It's much the same combination of tradition and futurism that powered the original Roxy Music aesthetic, except that Pink Grease's Rory Lewarne fronts the band more in the spirit of Iggy Pop or Lux Interior than Bryan Ferry. Several tracks sound like The Cramps invading the disco - "Fever" even borrows the surly momentum of their classic "Garbageman" riff - while "Superfool" switches midway through from New York Dolls-y raunch to Moroder-esque techno-disco

If such brazen Seventies revivalists as the Scissor Sisters can turn a tawdry trick or two in today's pop marketplace, there's no reason why Sheffield's Pink Grease shouldn't be able to effect a comparable raid on the public consciousness, drawing as they do upon similarly ripe influences from slightly later in that decade. The swaggering opener "Remember Forever" contains most of the things required from great rock'n'roll, yoking together raw garage-punk guitars, whining synthesiser and a Fifties-ish vocal hook to form a jagged psychobilly cruiser. It's much the same combination of tradition and futurism that powered the original Roxy Music aesthetic, except that Pink Grease's Rory Lewarne fronts the band more in the spirit of Iggy Pop or Lux Interior than Bryan Ferry. Several tracks sound like The Cramps invading the disco - "Fever" even borrows the surly momentum of their classic "Garbageman" riff - while "Superfool" switches midway through from New York Dolls-y raunch to Moroder-esque techno-disco, all capped off with fulsome orgasmic gasps. With echoes of the Stones, Ramones, Them, DAF, Glitter Band and Electric 6 elsewhere, the overwhelming impression is of a band reared on visceral rock power and sleaze - as good a formula as any for high-octane rock'n'roll fun.