Dan Sartain
Album: Too Tough To Live
Label: One Little Indian
Tracks: 13
Website: www.dansartain.com

Gentlemen of a certain age (your humble narrator included) will be simply thrilled honey to hear these 13 tracks delivered in less than 19 minutes! It's not all in tune, there are precious few guitar upstrokes and the drums are not quite loud enough. In other words it's like all those badly recorded first generation punk singles you got into after devouring the Pistols, Clash, Damned, Ramones etc at the age of 12 after scouring the arse end of NME for Small Wonder's mail order listings.

About as sophisticated as a snotty nose, Too Tough To Live sounds like a producer has been daft enough to attempt to constrain all that youthful playground punk energy on mere magnetic tape, while also managing to inflict their aural ambitions on a song like I'm Aware with its rudimentary sci-fi sound effects. For that it deserves extra authenticity merits.

Sartain also manages to infuse his punk rock with a great big greasy slab of rockabilly - Swap Meet and I Wanna Join the Army could almost be proto-Clash demos, while Boo Hoo Hoo is a distant relative of The Damned's Stab Your Back. Jane Wiedlin of The Go Gos guest stars on Now Now Now and is right at home.

All of which still begs the question: is it punk rock enough to just turn your school jacket inside out; or do you have to rip it up as well?

Nick Churchill
www.thegranvillechambers.co.uk