XX Teens - Welcome To Goon Island

Some bands have no luck in the name game. After being threatened with legal action by a copier corporation under their previous guise of Xerox Teens, this London quintet settled on the dubious-sounding XX Teens (and they're not even teenagers.) Never mind all that though, because their debut album Welcome To Goon Island is brimming with the ideas, confidence and dynamism that only a band happy in their own public skin could produce. A discernible post-punk vitality abounds on this record, and when singer Rich Cash isn't employing a Mark E Smith yowl, as on Round, they're going all Pigbag in the trumpeted refrain of Darlin'. In truth though, XX Teens are something of a rock chameleon, capable of shifting through styles as they please, from the cowbell dance-punk of opener The Way We Were to the southern-fried blues of Only You. Never mind the name, here's the XX Teens. [Nick Mitchell]