Stomp Records – 09 Jul 2021
The Real Sickies produce one of the most fun albums of the year.
The Real Sickies are not remotely afraid of a pop hook, making for one of the most consistently fun punk albums I’ve heard in a long time. All punk albums should be as much fun as Love is For Lovers, which is 14 tracks of unapologetically catchy pop-punk with a healthy smattering of new wave and a few elements of other genres thrown in for good measure. It’s an absolute delight from start to finish.
The lead singer (whose name I don’t know because I can’t find anything online that says who plays what in this band) has a perfectly snotty voice for this vaguely Ramones-core style of punk. However, and this is a very minor complaint, I wish he would enunciate a little better when he sings, as there are several songs on here where I wouldn’t have been able to understand his choruses if they weren’t also the titles of the songs. The title track, “Love is For Lovers” ends up sounding like “Love is a low,” while “Least Favorite of Mine” ends up sounding like “Little Seven of Nine” (which, admittedly, would have been an awesome name for a song [ed.- Agreed]). Still, this is one of my few complaints in an otherwise rambunctiously fun pop-punk album.
The use of the keyboards give the songs a bit of an early Elvis Costello feel, with “Give and Take” sounding almost like a track pulled straight off of This Year’s Model. My favorite two tracks, “Sickies Don’t Talk” and “I Think of Sunshine” almost sound like they make up two halves of the same song as, even with the one-second gap between the songs, they still seamlessly move from one track to the next like the gap was just a rest in one continuous song. The former of these two songs has a very energetic intro that calls to mind the intros to both the theme from Footloose and The Cure‘s “Close to Me.” The penultimate track, “Jeepster,” is one of the bluesiest and danceiest songs on the album. “They Don’t Know” is a gorgeous closer with the killer keyboard riffs carrying us off into the sunset.
While this is the Real Sickies’ third album, it’s the first one of theirs that I’ve checked out, and it’s not likely to be the last. The next time you’re unhappy for any reason, try putting this record on because it’s really hard to be depressed while listening to something this unabashedly enjoyable.
Julie is punk rock, lesbian time lady from the future. The greatest things in the world are punk rock and science fiction. Check out her website JulieRiver.com!
