Crackle. Pfft. Crackle. Huuuuuuuum. That there was a reconstruction of the first 6 seconds of the debut album from The Beat Up (or The Beatings for the likes of us who still also refuse to recognise the Mean Fiddler as anything other than the LA2). And that is all the subtlety you’re getting for the next 32 minutes. So on your feet, and no slouching. Well, not unless you can make it look, like, really cool anyway. On initial form nobody was expecting The Beat Up (nee The Beatings) to conjure up a particularly complex weave for their debut, though its producer (My Bloody Valentine legend Kevin Shields) did give some false hope on that front. And thus this is an obvious record in almost every way, like rifling exhaustively through the punk rock dressing up box round at grandmas on a Sunday afternoon. Inspiration is thin on the ground, ambition even thinner, but it is very faithful, extremely thorough, and on that strength just pulls through.
In return for landing his esteemed production credit in the sleevenotes The Beat Up (nee The Beatings) apparently built Kevin Shields a studio, and there’s no doubt as to who got the most out of that deal. But he has done them a number of favours, namely ramming all the faders up to a level probably indicated on his mixing desk by the letters PRMLSCR and M, and for there rarely being a moment on the record where a guitar somewhere in the congested-mix isn’t trying to do you some damage. He’s handed them layers and depth, probably using more tracks than they could count up to, bringing bursts of feedback out of the blindside at just the point it is needed and crafting an exceptionally bulbous sound. All nice touches which help to dress what is a fairly normal album.
The title track opens up like something loitering around the skuzzier end of ‘Appetite For Destruction’, positioning its attitude at least. ‘Bad Feeling’ pulls off some ‘Kick Out The Jams’ style chord changes and despite giving little reason to hang around after the 45 second mark becomes one of the album’s most powerful and enduring moments, ‘The Flame’ seems to be heading for a Rolling Stones / Doors zombie knockout, but descends into ambiguous blues jam and they try and Cramps it up for a few moments in ‘Heartbreak’ but can’t really pull the craziness off. It’s not a bad album by any stretch, it’s just not a remarkable or even particularly memorable one. It’s like a punk rock pop-up-book, all the most obvious aspects cut out and forced into the foreground. It’s nothing that we’ve not heard on every Ramones album ever, only they had the benefit of getting there first, sharing the same surname and having funny hair.