It feels like the illegitimate child of Sonic Youth and The Ramones playing britpop. And it's way better that what I was expecting. The britpop tropes are not too heavy, the guitar sound is dirty just has it needs to be, it's actually way better than 99% of britpop.
In one of those odd coincidences that this list throws up, today’s album is from Elastica who were fronted by Justine Frischmann who was half of a Britpop power couple with Damon Albarn and thus indirectly responsible for him writing two of the most self pitying and mawkish breakup songs of all time when they inevitably split up. Anyhoo, as the saying goes this album is both good and original. However, the parts that are good aren’t original and vice versa. Albarn makes a guest appearance on this on a couple of tracks and was caught out shamelessly ripping off a riff from Wire on the track Connection. The non-Albarn tracks are a bit better, but there are clear similarities to the New York punk sound of the Ramones and especially Blondie on the track Vaseline. As with Blur, I really wanted to like this, but in the end it swung and missed for me.