Consumer Guide Album

That Petrol Emotion: Babble [Polydor, 1987]
Although I'm a known sucker for fast guitar bands, I've turned down hundreds that shall remain nameless. So why do I love these guys? Specifying comes as hard to me as their originality comes easy to them. Except in snatches I can't understand the words, which apparently only add up to snatches anyway. From the press packet I gather that their politics are no more than you'd expect from Northern Ireland, not enough to win me over. And however I shuffle perfectly applicable terms like "punk" and "pop," they just won't form a suitable pigeonhole. One thing I notice: in addition to the tunes, which can't put bored music over any more, they're given to scalar guitar hooks that remind me of nothing so much as art-rock ostinatos. In theory, I hate this device. But here it's just another token of smart, untrammeled enthusiasm. A-