Useless Star Boys: Useless Star Boys
Launched 4 August 2025
CD | DL
3.0 out of 5.0 stars
Mod’s Not Useless? Quick-rising Medway trio Useless Star Boys’ debut album affords a broad-based tackle punky late 70s energy pop that’s not afraid to personal the M-word. Robert Plummer will get able to look sharp.
The Useless Star Boys have a solution prepared for anybody accusing them of nostalgia. “We aren’t making an attempt to recreate the previous,” says drummer and chief songwriter Pat McGinn. “We’re imagining that we’re there, a bit misplaced, making an attempt to write down a success.”
And hey presto, with a surge of energy chords and a nifty bass run, they take us again with them to a vanished period. “Now it’s ‘79/Ain’t gonna waste our time,” runs the opening lyric to We Are The New Wave. Nothing fallacious with that: 1979 was one of many biggest years for music, with so many concepts left underdeveloped that there’s loads of scope to observe paths not taken.
Again then, the Jam and the Conflict have been on the peak of their powers, whereas the Mod Revival had birthed the likes of the Purple Hearts and the Chords. It wasn’t uncommon at gigs to have Mod bands and punk outfits on the identical invoice, whereas the Treatment and the Gang Of 4 have been already pointing the way in which forward.
That musical melting pot involves thoughts when listening to the Useless Star Boys’ album. The opening observe, Is Distant Management Actually Breaking Down?, echoes Mott The Hoople, a giant affect on first-wave punk bands together with Era X. There’s additionally a propensity for Conflict-style sloganeering on songs resembling Medway Wake Up.
However their Mod influences are within the combine too, giving rise to an obsession with trying “sharp” and a preoccupation with ace-face insiderdom. “Sussed ones know the indicators,” sings vocalist and bass participant Viv Tucker in Exploding Band Tonight. The identical tune proclaims that “the offended younger scene” has “had it”, changed by a snappily dressed future ushered in by “the times of change”.
The general sound of the album, recorded “in a bomb-proof shelter on the outskirts of Chatham”, has a trebly, demo-tape really feel to it. However its greatest moments are genuinely thrilling, significantly the headlong rush of Residing In The House Age and the sublimely catchy Golden Alternative.
The band’s sound is unquestionably a Mod-punk synthesis, with different rogue parts seamlessly built-in. Tucker’s voice remembers a sneerier Pete Shelley, whereas James Feist’s guitar enjoying alternates between uneven riffs and blasts of metallic noise. In the meantime, Marbles, a tune about psychological sickness, sports activities a wind-up intro harking back to the Treatment’s Grinding Halt.
The album’s solely cowl, a model of the Psychedelic Furs’ Heaven, is rendered because it might need been performed by the Intercourse Pistols. Equally, What Are We Gonna Be Tomorrow? will get below manner within the model of Fairly Vacant. All good influences to have, coming throughout as affectionate tributes reasonably than blatant theft.
Lyrically, there are many cog-in-a-machine odes to the downtrodden, of the sort that proliferated in late 70s insurgent rock. Successive songs bemoan the destiny of small-town, bottom-of-the heap underdogs – “the faceless tens of millions”, “those society don’t see”, “all going nowhere”. Options, as ever in rock & roll, are naggingly non-specific: “Let’s begin the revolution – earlier than it will get too late.”
The goals and nightmares of any up-and-coming band, visions of hits and misses, additionally hang-out the songs. The very title of Hey, I’m On The TV Mum sort of offers the sport away – “Now no-one’s choosing up my name/The band’s success was simply too small.” However elsewhere, the band are extra optimistic: “We wanna fly… And no-one’s gonna cease us,” sings Tucker in We Are The New Wave.
It has been stated that the rock period is over and that we now dwell in a hip hop world, however no musical style ever totally dies. And if anybody can revive the spirit of ’79 for a complete new era, Useless Star Boys are nicely positioned to take action. Their first album exhibits a whole lot of promise: let’s hope they construct on these foundations.
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Useless Star Boys are on Fb right here. They’re additionally on Soundcloud and Instagram.
All phrases by Robert Plummer. Extra writing by Robert will be discovered at his creator’s archive. He’s additionally on X as @robertp926.
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