Juliette And The Licks
You're Speaking My Language

What’s funnier, I ask you: heading to your local for a beer and some football, only to witness your team suffer a drubbing at the hands of your most loathsome derby rivals; or to come home from said experience to be greeted by this, an album that’s so tick this box, tick that box, sell a bucketload that it may as well have been made by computers? Or by Kelly Osbourne's backroom writers at least. Yep, this album’s much funnier, albeit in a similarly not ha ha fashion.

Deflated by defeat, I slouch into my couch and flip open the monthly broadsheet music guide. You know the one – bright colours, big names, some insufferable guff over not much at all (be fair, you only scan read those articles on African music). And, lo and behold, inside its pages rests a brief summary of this here record, playing in my lounge right now, inflaming and irritating my ears with each passing second. The writer responsible has dared to scribble ‘punk’ beside a few other choice adjectives; presumably said writer has never heard a punk record in his or her life.

Punk? Nah, although Lewis offers a fair Hollywood approximation of it. She snarls and spits her way through the rowdiest numbers here, title track included, rasping her tongue and guzzling petroleum for added authenticity. Only it’s a misguided attempt at credibility: the songs simply don’t have legs regardless of Lewis' snotty enthusiasm, and fall waywardly towards irrelevance as soon as their generic sounds have departed one's airspace. It's all as punk as Billy Idol and as authentic as aeroplane food. Yuck.

What Lewis and band do better is the pop-rock ballad, and ‘American Boy Vol. 2’ is a decent stab at such a song. Problem is, it’s hard to quarry sympathy for an A-lister’s emotional woes, especially since her 9-5 involves fooling audiences into believing similar falsehoods. As she weeps tried-and-tested crocodile tears through ‘I Never Got To Tell You What I Wanted’, a single feeling of unrest stirs within one’s belly; immediate action follows.

Eject. Reject. Forget. A single circle for the obvious enthusiasm and nothing more. Now, back to lamenting that loss…