Shades on, Stetsons tilted, next stop the Joshua Tree. A year of giant leaps for Ver ‘Wild – from scruffy jockrock shamblearses to this year’s Ash to the actual, real life Top Ten and now onto the roof of a thrift store in LA to stop the traffic mid-goggle with a flash of their mighty alligator-skin boots.
‘American English’ nabs the canyon-quivering riff from U2‘s ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’, slaps on a chorus so monumental it makes K2 look like a pimple on a midge’s cock, stirs in a lyrical slagging of all tedious me-me-me singer-songwhiners (naming no names, [I]cough[/I]sailor) and stumbles bleary-eyed on the recipe for Single Of The Year. Your correspondent personally has a tenner on this record making Number One. Should make up for getting Costa Rica in that fucking sweepstake.
Mark Beaumont