My associations for this album are an afternoon in late 1979 spent visiting Newcastle with a new 'friend'. We'd been seeing one another for a couple of weeks, after an encounter in a nightclub in Durham where a bond was formed when I saw she had XTC and The Cure scrawled in biro on her jeans. As was the way for youngsters, we thought an afternoon touring record shops in Newcastle fun.
I, no doubt, ended up with some obscure Canterbury prog nonsense, she bought this fine album (but with the other cover). She got it and I didn't.
This CD version has the track order of the second 1979 release, but the cover of the original (above), as well as ten bonus tracks of assorted B-sides.
From the beginning, it's what you'd expect of the Undertones - short high-energy songs, still sounding good 45 years on. Family Entertainment, Girls Don't Like It and a couple of others take us to the Peel favourite Teenage Kicks (a song whose ubiquity should ensure that composer John O'Neill never has to work another day in his life). This little beauty hasn't lost anything over the years, doing everything expected of a perfect pop song in under two and a half minutes, yet left off the original album and only added in the second release. And the greats keep coming - Here Comes The Summer, the criminally underrated Get Over You (follow up to Teenage Kicks), Jimmy, Jimmy and She's A Runaround. If I'm being ultra-picky, perhaps there's a bit of filler towards the end of the original album, but the songs are still a decent enough listen. Especially the run-off Casbah Rock, less than a minute long but a nice re-hash of Louie, Louie
And it's nice that the bonus tracks aren't just filler, either. Well, one or two don't really stand up, but Mars Bars and You've Got My Number are ace!
This sounds as fresh today as when it was released. Young lads having fun making music!
4* - a great slice of post-punk pop from Derry's finest.
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