There ain’t no point in dancing around the fact – even if The Sugars don’t like The White Stripes they still come on like the Party Store equivalent. Even if they don’t list them anywhere among their influences, frontman Daddy Sugar’s weaselly falsetto is annoyingly close to the Brother White's and, more importantly, just plain annoying.
B-side ‘TV’, with its “I don’t like the people on TV / and the people on TV don't like me” refrain has its heart in the right place, but after they've told you this for three minutes and 35 seconds, you start to think that maybe the people on TV have got a point. Maybe I'm being too harsh, and I’m bang on a bit of ‘1950’s’ fun, me – gimme the sparkly Pipettes, the rough and ready Vincent and his Villains or the doo-wop that seduced Jens Lekman any Drive-In Saturday, but this...
The problem with it is that it tires very quickly. Where those that do it well will draw you further and further into their Phil Spector daydream this just becomes more and more grating with each listen, like an old Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers record. And yes, that reference point is rotting faster than The Sugars teeth but they asked for it.
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3's Score