Crazy Rhythms (1980)

The bashful self-consciousness with which these artistes approach the business at hand strays now and then into painful realms. Crying out loud, they can't even manage to push vocals through the microphone with much of anything like confidence. But it doesn't matter. Once they get down to hitting the groove it's easy to forgive them anything. The impossibly fast chording drives the proceedings forward at breakneck pace, and speaking of rhythms, every member of the band gets at least one percussion credit. At the same time it remains under control all the way through, which says to me they know exactly what they're doing here. It operates at a fairly primal level, even though they are white, bashful, and arguably responsible for the genre now known as "indie rock." That's a stretch, but how can you call this "punk" or "new wave," let alone "rock"? But that doesn't matter either. So just turn it up and twitch along.