THE ETTES - WICKED WILL (Varese Sarabamde)

Aesthetically, at least according to the album art, The Ettes look good. Adopting the cool of retro style icons such as Marlon Brando and Tura Santana with the edgier, darker, real life Americana of Jewish gangsters and Caril Anne Fugate, the image promises much but are the band merely a style club or an interesting musical proposition? Things do not start well with acoustic opener 'Teeth' a tired knackers yard mule of a track where vocalist Coco sings with all the passion and urgency of a very bored tax specialist reading ingredients from a can of Dr Pepper (carbonated water....caramel E150d....preservative E211...). Indeed she sounds very much like a cloned Holly Golightly with all personality extracted with the precision of a master surgeon. The Cramps are obviously an influence, check out the ham-fisted Bryan Gregory style electric eel blasts that punctuate the intro of 'Excuse' (and elsewhere) but any initial excitement dissipates as the songs quickly establishes a miserable genericism that is present across the entire LP. Sadly the songs, far from facilitating crazed manias, delirium and werewolf howling in the listener do not even manage to coax the lightest tap of the toe. 'One By One' makes 90's fem rock bad joke Fluffy seem like dangerous disciples of a revolutionary sound while drummer Poni pounds away on 'Trouble With You' but the accompanying song is so limp as drain the most primordial beats of any hotbloodedness. The flatness of the music is difficult to explain since it was produced by Liam Watson at Toe Rag Studios, but flat it is, a sort of musical equivalent of a relief map of the Netherlands. The album ends as it started, with a dull acoustic number reaching out for American roots when perhaps the band would be better resolved in reaching out for the roots of the mandrake plant. This album is the antithesis of what rock music should be. As Shakespeare may have said in reference to the 32 minutes of this album "all the drowsy syrups of the world, medicine thee that I might sleep out this gap in time..."

NEXT TO BE SAVAGED (PROBABLY) : HOWLER 'AMERICA GIVE UP'