Album Review: The Spangles – #SweetFA

The Spangles must have big sleeves, because that’s where they wear their influences and there are a lot of them. #SweetFA is a smorgasbord of jolly punk and rock methodologies that, oddly, doesn’t end up sounding derivative. That’s partly because there is clearly a lot of personality behind this outfit and you get the sense that a lot of the time, the tongue is firmly in the cheek.

#SweetFA opens with some unnerving found sound that morphs into Growing Up, which is a storming instant shoutalong classic. Track 2, The Only One establishes the Wildhearts connection (Spangles Ben Marsden and Ginna Rhodes were in The Main Grains with Wildheart Danny McCormack). In fact, you can rhyme off the ‘well, this sounds a bit like that’ all through this record. Hold My Hand is how Weezer might reimagine The Beatles, Get Over Yourself and One Good Reason channel Transvision Vamp and The Primitives 1990s pop-punk take. Back On The Meds Again is a nod to The Damned, with that Neat Neat Neat vibe, some Captain Sensible-esque wailing guitar work and a vague sense of something goth-a-billy about its 50s reverbed radio vocal. Here We Go Again could easily be a Steve Jonessong; a call-back to producer Dave Draper‘s work producing The Professionals’ What In The World album. Ramone is simply an homage to, well, The Ramones. POTUS could easily be a Jello Biafra song. And so on. None of this is a bad thing. They’re bloody good at it.

The Spangles are a high octane garage rock punk pop band with a knack for crafting what they call, self-deprecatingly, ‘2 minute slices of 70s inspired punk pop’ but what are, in fact, immediate and anthemic rockers. For a three-piece, The Spangles kick up an unholy racket that has to be simply awesome live. No pretension, just straight out dirty, thrilling rock n roll.

#SweetFa is out now on Raaa! Records.