Waaaagh! Pop! It’s mad, isn’t it, Pop? Chaos theory made flesh. It’s like a butterfly flaps its wings in the Caribbean and 2,000 miles away in Grimsby giant sabre-toothed meerkats start skateboarding through the shopping precinct wearing those hats with hammers on. MeNtAl! Far too mental for the alleged geniuses behind [a]Thunderbugs[/a] who are, in words of one syllable, WRONG!
All the big record companies employ hundreds of experts who take a look at [a]Take That[/a] and sign up any old bunch of ropey ole ex-rent boys they can drag off the streets. WRONG! So along come the [a]Spice Girls[/a] and they comb the stage schools for wacky female foursomes wiv ‘cred’. WRONG! So then they think, yeah, like [I]real [/I]cred equals guitars, right? Cue Nat Umbrug and Ole Sporty Mk 2 and hundreds of fem-pop combos with guitars and gurly-power ‘tude. WRONG!
YELP! This is [a]Thunderbugs[/a]’ first ‘proper’ gig. We know this because the singer says, “This is our first proper gig – YELP!” They are a YELP! ‘group’. A YELP! ‘band’. They play YELP! ‘guitars’. They sound like The Corrs crossed with YELP! Guns N’Roses. The leather-trousered singer has five moves that she repeats endlessly. She bends the knees, hunches her shoulders, points at the crowd, thrusts her pelvis and YELPS! And when she sings she hiccoughs all the important words. This denotes ‘passion’. YELP! And in between songs she gushes good ole mid-Atlantic accented showbiz cheese. And then she YELPS! Goddamn it! Stop kicking that dog! Won’t someone [I]please [/I]phone the RSPCfuckingA? YELP! Aaaaaargh!
‘Bugs’ve got one vaguely interesting song – ‘Jealous’ – which boasts an incredibly violent lyric about smashing some lass’ face in. Other than that they’re just a miserable example of category-error product-misplacement.
After a decade in which gurly/manufactured/ space-age/fun-pop has kicked male/credible/ retro/indie-rock’s ass clean off and just as many in [I]NME[/I]-Pop land are at last waking up to the happy fact that a) the future IS female and that b) the only place for guitars in the next century is going to be in the fucking museums, the marketing boys in Proper Pop land are deluging us with scores of allegedly credible all-female Shed 7-lites. WRONG! So sack all the A&R men! Every last one! They’re [I]shit[/I]!
And, hey, [a]Thunderbugs[/a]! Thunder-bugger off, why dontcha?