Well what a rotten album this is, then.  Really, just not very good at all – what the hell was all the fuss about?

I sort of skipped the hype surrounding these guys, but I do remember reading one rather thoughtful argument, although where I read it I can’t remember, that made a very good point.  If a group can be hyped to the rafters based on their first couple of home recordings on MySpace, then there is a massive danger that they will still be finding their feet and just won’t be ready.  They’ll get chewed up, evaluated, measured, loved or dismissed, all on the basis of a few home demos that basically represent no more than their first, tentative steps into the world of recorded music.  They might barely even be a band yet.

Has this happened to Black Kids?  Well I’ve no idea, of course, but it is a massive danger with getting too excited about a band before they’ve had time to find their feet.  I mean, for fuck’s sake, even the great Tom Waits’ early recordings, whilst pretty good, gave little indication of the three decades of genius that were to come.  Just listen to The Early Years Vol. 1 and see what I mean – it’s okay, but it would have been easy enough to dismiss him on that basis.

So with this I think the only song I’d heard before was the only decent song on the album: I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend etc etc…  This is a good, catchy track, the rest is bobbins, and really I am left feeling a little sullied by the experience.  Have I expected too much from a group I would normally approach with a bit more skepticism because of all the hype?  Have they been dealt something of a raw deal because of everyone being so desperate to find a sure thing in an era when all labels are seriously running scared?  Are they appealing to other people?  Or are they just a very limited group, dragged out of their natural environment by human beings’ rather unedifying herd instinct?  Who knows, but this album has nothing that I would recommend to people who like the stuff that normally appears on this site, and I feel a little guilty for expecting that it might.

Black Kids – I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You
Black Kids – Hurricane Jane (Fucking awful.)

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