Vibrators

Stav desky: M
- nová, nehraná deska

Stav obalu: M
- bezchybný, nový nebo jako nový

Pozn.: znaménko + nebo - upřesňuje stav desky, obalu

nove


Why is it whenever I listen to The Vibrators I want to cringe? It's a rhetorical question because I know exactly the reason. The music can sound so ham-fisted, the vocals so out of tune and the lyrics so dumb I want to shake my head at the sheer effrontery of a band who've been churning out this stuff for nigh on thirty years still expecting people to shell out good money. And then I remember I am one of those people and I have to recall all over again why I like this simple rock 'n' roll band so much.

Play Energize once and all that's evident are the warts – the laughably childish lyrics of the pro-animal liberation stance of "Animals" and the appallingly bad vocals of "Moonlight" (so badly out of tune that they surely have to be deliberate – although I'm at a loss to understand why that would be). It would be so easy to throw up your hands in despair and let the album forever rot. But it's with repeated listening that the strengths of The Vibrators begin to emerge.

They may not be as good a band but The Vibrators remind me a great deal of the Ramones. The same sense of stupid fun and bludgeoning power prevails. Take "New Brain". Common sense screams the song is as dumb as a rock but it's just irresistible in its silliness – "Her new brain says I’m no longer cool and it won't let me see her 'cos it's working to rule" – with the title repeated so often its hammered into your head and can't be dislodged. Then there's "¾ Angelina" about a psychopath dismembering his victim. In this instance good taste should dictate the song is consigned to the waste bin but the absurdity of the whole thing actually puts a smile of my face!

But, more than these, there are three tracks on Energise that perfectly highlight why I keep returning to The Vibrators.

"Jukebox Light" contains a riff right out of the Marc Bolan workbook and, again, its strength lies in its infectiousness – that and the fact the band pound out the riff to the level of distraction. Another is "No More" which contains the greatest guitar refrain Big Country never wrote. If Knox had written and released the track in the eighties The Vibrators would have had a hit on their hands. Finally "So Far Down" is simply one of the best songs the band have ever recorded. It's fast, it's hard-hitting and in "I'm so far down that it feels like up to me" it has a memorable punch-line.

_Energise_ is the best album by The Vibrators since their minor late seventies heyday. Keep on releasing material like this and I'll keep coming back. Oh, who am I kidding? I'll keep on coming back anyway!