“Listen” / “Sad Eyed People” / “That’s When Your Blood Bumps” / “Two Guitars Clash” (Chrysalis CHS 2580) January 1982
Stiff Little Fingers | Listen | (Chrysalis) 1982 | Same problem for Stiff Little Fingers. Whatever their good intentions – at £1.10 for a four tracker, the price is certainly right – the results are wrapped up in a bad, muddy sound, mismanaged and ultimately misplaced.
In fact the only song with any genuine life to survive on vinyl is ‘Two Guitars Clash’ – original power, original might but still rendered impotent and flat. (Sounds, 02/01/82)
Now where were we? Oh yes, allow me to introduce you to those nice chaps over in the corner. Don’t laugh at their accents, they’re regular gentlemen Beau Brummels this SLF lot.
Yes, that’s right, they used to be Stiff Little Fingers but they’ve cleaned up their act, ditched all that screaming, unmannerly aggression for a modicum of melody and, with the aid of the excellent ex-TRB drummer Dolphin, have come up with “That’s When Your Blood Bumps”, a pithy little platter bound to please both Chrysalis and die-hard punters.
Pity they had to go and spoil it by including three more pseudo-passionate soul-searching ballads inserted solely for the sake of being able to spout on and on about value for money.
What was that motto me mam pulled from her Christmas cracker? Quality not quantity. (Melody Maker, 09/01/82)
Blustery thud and blunder that, along with the recruitment of ex-TRB drummer Dolphin Taylor, seems to confirm SLF’s sad degeneration into turgid tradrock.
And Jake Burns’ sacrilegious exchange of his punk leather for the zoot suit he sports on the sleeve of this latest EP must rank as the year’s most undignified spot of belated bandwagoneering. (NME, 02/01/82)
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