Roaring into full and beautiful effect, this is a detailed analysis of the hierarchy dominating the American rites of passage – adulthood achieved via a strict social code where winners win and losers lose. You may not have been schooled in the U.S., but you have most definitely seen 'Pretty In Pink' or some similar movie, and therefore you know the score.
Howling feedback and emo-stylo guitars are interspersed with hammond grooves aplenty, as 'Chips Ahoy' details the tale of the introspective lass that has an intuitive knack for conjuring drug money via a racetrack gift. Kills her in the head, like, but the migraines are shoved to one side in this hollowed cacophony (one that pales into insignificance when you consider the incisive truths to come!)
For 'Boys & Girls In America' is filled to the brim with caustic and incisive truths about the process of growing up – the whole record plays upon everything that we will scarcely admit to ourselves, so urgent is the race for acceptance. 'Hot Soft Light' blasts our ears like a Lizzy classic, and namechecks Lynott's contemporaries on the way to its glorious self-destructive conclusion.
The cream of the crop is the beautifully, painfully accurate 'You Can Make Him Like You':
“You don't have to deal with the dealers/Let your boyfriend deal with the dealers
You don't have to go to the right kinda schools/Let your boyfriend come from the right kinda schools/You can wear his old sweatshirt/ You can cover yourself like a bruise”
Accurate as hell, and only cynical to the cynics, lines like this litter this unbelievable collection. 'Massive Nights' is screwed up to the point of carefree abandon – held down with a ridiculous riff on the keys that just might (and somehow does) work. 'Likewise, 'Chillout tent' details the romance of a bad trip at a festival (something that all music lovers should at least partially identify with),
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Sent on a crescendo of good gestures, piano and gently distorted guitar, it simply cannot fail, whilst falsetto female backing vocals litter the 'Is she old enough' debate as the party rages ever onwards.
Firmly trailing in the wake of the post-grunge thingio that was started by Blink 182 and Green Day, this still retains the ability to stand proudly and weirdly on it's own three feet - for this is one hell of a record! The finale, 'Southtown Girls' a beautiful dedication to the local stayers, again plays gently on the Thin Lizzy noise policy, with a strummed bassline and yet more painfully accurate observations, though you may be at pains to acknowledge half of the truths contained here!
Cutting edge, and necessarily filled with caustic cynicism there is still a chance that there might be a whole lot less teen angst to mop up come Judgement Day – Kids, I hope you're listenin'!!
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