One leggy blonde female vocalist/guitarist, one rocker and his guitars, a drum machine and an attitude the size of Dundee - all these and more go to make up the sizzling sensation that are The Leatherettes. The title track starts things off as a scorching lone fuzz guitar sears a hole in your head, a thudding, crisply percussive drum machine provides a combination of light beat and deep thud, but above this you have the slightly processed vocal of lead singer Becca, whose performance mixes angst, intensity, rage, determination and razor-wire sharpness in one magnificent dose, as the slow burning fuse threatens to explode any second, the intensity lasting right to the end on a slice of punk action that mixes the rawness of late seventies NYC punk, the attitude of late seventies UK punk, the psychdeleic fuzz-punk of Jesus and Mary Chain and comes out winning.
"Mickey & Minnie" is faster, harder, dancier, punkier and altogether more commercial, a bit like Toni Basil on industrial strength downers, as the vocal angst spews out over another red hot guitar sea of fuzz and electrifying density, the drum machine keeping the rhythm together.
"Asylum" completes the picture with an altogether scarier vocal that's right on the edge, slightly less manic but no less effective as the waves of fuzz guitar create the template below which shuffling drum machine clatters away, and above which Becca's intensity of vocal strides along to fantastic effect, evoking the distinct feeling that she'd quite happily deck you one if you tried to stop her. It's raw, it's cutting edge and it's of a past unseen for many a year, but for all that, it's contemporary, it draws you in and it's fecking superb.