Undertones [1981] Positive Touch

[01] Fascination
[02] Julie Ocean
[03] Life's Too Easy
[04] Crisis Of Mine
[05] You're Welcome
[06] His Good Looking Girlfriend
[07] The Positive Touch
[08] When Saturday Comes
[09] It's Going To Happen
[10] Sigh & Explode
[11] I Don't Know
[12] Hannah Dot
[13] Boy Wonder
[14] Forever Paradise
[15] Kiss In The Dark
[16] Beautiful Friend
[17] Life's Too Easy
[18] Fairly In The Money Now



amg: The Undertones' third album is a marked departure from the speedy pop-punk of their first two. The Buzzcocks-derived ramalama is almost entirely gone, replaced by a more varied and softer instrumental palette that features new textures like piano (courtesy of Paul Carrack, then in Squeeze) and trumpet. Oddly, the new arrangements, when mixed with Feargal Sharkey's tightly wound vocals, have the effect of actually increasing the tension. Even tender, largely acoustic tunes like the lovely "Julie Ocean" have an undercurrent of anxiety, and faster tracks like the pounding opener "Fascination" and the near-paranoid "His Goodlooking Girlfriend" are downright nerve-wracking. The combination is best heard in the panicky "Crisis of Mine" and the sardonic "Life's Too Easy," two of the album's better tracks, but even the buzzy "Hannah Doot," one of the few songs that sounds like it would fit on the Undertones' earlier albums, is enhanced by the nervy production. The Rykodisc reissue adds four bonus tracks, including a less-interesting early version of "Life's Too Easy."
(amg 9/10)

Undertones [1979] Undertones

[01] Family Entertainment
[02] Girls Don't Like It
[03] Male Model
[04] I Gotta Getta
[05] Teenage Kicks
[06] Wrong Way
[07] Jump Boys
[08] Here Comes The Summer
[09] Get Over You
[10] Billy's Third
[11] Jimmy Jimmy
[12] True Confessions
[13] She's A Run Around
[14] I Know A Girl
[15] Listening In
[16] Casbah Rock
[17] Smarter Than You
[18] True Confessions
[19] Emergency Cases
[20] Really Really
[21] She Can Only Say No
[22] Mars Bars
[23] One Way Love
[24] Top Twenty
[25] You've Got My Number (Why Don't You Use It!)
[26] Let's Talk About Girls



amg: What is a perfect album? One could make an argument that a perfect album is one that sets out a specific set of artistic criteria and then fulfills them flawlessly. In that respect, and many others, the Undertones' 1979 debut is a perfect album. The Northern Ireland quintet's brief story is no different than that of literally dozens of other bands to form in the wake of the Clash and, more importantly, the Buzzcocks, but the group infuses so much unabashed joy in their two-minute three-chord pop songs, and there's so little pretension in their unapologetically teenage worldview, that even the darker hints of life in songs like the suicide-themed "Jimmy Jimmy" are delivered with a sense of optimism at odds with so many of their contemporaries. There's no fewer than three all-time punk-pop classics here; besides that song, the singles "Teenage Kicks" and "Get Over You" are simple declarations of teenage hormonal lust that somehow manage to be cute instead of Neanderthal; perhaps it's Feargal Sharkey's endearingly adenoidal whine, or the chipper way the O'Neill brothers pitch in on schoolboy harmonies, like a teenage Irish Kinks. All of the other 13 songs, even the 47-second blip "Casbah Rock," are nearly to that level of brilliance, with the frenetic "Girls Don't Like It" a particular standout. The Rykodisc CD adds seven demos and single sides, and also includes an entirely different, punkier version of "True Confessions" than the nervous, new wave-influenced throb of the version on the original U.K. vinyl.
(amg 9/10)