Pretty Girls Make Graves

“Style over substance,” so the detractors say. I don’t see it. “Just another trendy band signed to a trendy label,” say the punker-than-thou kids who have forgotten Pretty Girls Make Graves’ considerably punk roots. Piss off I say. This is the fifth time in 15 months that I’ve spent the evening in the company of these five Seattle-ites. You think I’d keep coming back if they were any of the above? Exactly; Pretty Girls fucking rock.

Vocalist Andrea Zollo is full of flu. Shows in Manchester and Nottingham were cancelled whilst she sought antibiotics, and you can taste the illness in the air as she rasps her way through a glut of songs mostly drawn from current album ‘The New Romance’. The line “Doctor, do you have a remedy?” from latest single ‘All Medicated Geniuses’ has never been more appropriate, but whilst she warns us that her voice may not last the distance, she still gives it her all – even indulging in between-song banter with the appreciative crowd. Should you be looking for a punk rock princess to tide you over until Courtney’s rehabilitation is complete, look no further than Ms Zollo, as she’s everything that what’s-her-face from The Distillers isn’t.

The songs, whilst brash and loud, are pure pop at heart, and therein lies the genius of Pretty Girls. They’ve all done the underground punk thing in their previous outfits, and now they want to see you dance. ‘The New Romance’ may not have topped too many end-of-year polls, but you’d be hard-pushed to name a more consistent album of 2003. ‘The Grandmother Wolf’, ‘Blue Lights’ and ‘Chemical Chemical’ are dispatched alongside older tracks like the blissfully-romantic ‘The Get Away’ (“I never wanna go home. Massachusetts, Michigan, I don't know. Just as long as it's us”) and the triumphant finale of ‘Speakers Push The Air’, but it’s the band’s single-before-last, ‘This Is Our Emergency’, that really stands out. Simpler lyrics have rarely been written – “Stand up so I can see you, shout out so I can hear you, reach out so I can touch you” – but few better ones were heard all year. 2003 should have belonged to Pretty Girls Make Graves. 2004 will.