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...like being stuck on a fairground walzter for longer than you intended...

Pay Attention

4 / 10 No Doubttried it and got off about the time Gwen dyed her hair pink. However, the ska-revival roundabout with punk knobs on is still turning Stateside and Boston's eight-strong Mighty Mighty Bosstones are still riding it on this, their sixth album.

/img/mightybosstones0500.jpg Practically every track has a frantic, "umchick! umchick! umchick!", ska-lite beat. Then the horns go, "ba ba ba baaa!", the guitars go, "chugga chugga", and blokey sings, or rather goes, "woah!" then emits a subsonic gurgle. Apart from the ones that slow it just a little, or go ever so slightly faster, or vaguely calypso - bizarrely on 'She Just Happened' - or surreally Irish in the fantastically jolly 'Riot On Broad Street'.

Listening to the entire album, however, is rather like being stuck on a fairground walzter for longer than you intended. The smile on your face will have frozen into a rictus grin by the time track 16 ('The Day He Didn't Die') pogos itself to death in pretty much the same way as all that have gone before it. The relentless pace and perkiness starts to pall after five tracks and you wish to hear something just a bit different or as good as their superb first UK hit single, '97's 'The Impression That I Get'. Maybe the solution is to just lie back and think of summer.

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