Having more than teased with their self-titled EP in the November 2014, UK garage rockers Virgin Kids have unleashed their full sonic flirtation with debut album Greasewheel. Breeding their off kilter rock ‘n’ roll from an entangling of garage and post punk with psych and fiery pop rock, the London based trio cast an intoxicating enticement posing as an album which swiftly arouses the spirit and colludes with the imagination.
Formed as a bedroom project by Asher Preston, Virgin Kids fully emerged as a band late 2014 with childhood friend Paul Rosser and ex-Fawn Spots drummer Sean Hughes alongside the band’s frontman. Since then and the release of the aforementioned EP, the threesome has gained a potent live reputation, an adventure which has seen them share stages with the likes of whilst Jacuzzi Boys, The Coathangers, Kim and The Created, and Dirty Fences amongst others to date. Numerous comments about the band on stage talks of a “fevered intensity”, an element Virgin Kids has seemingly tried and for the main succeeded in now representing across Greasewheel.
The album opens with Bruised Knees, a kinetic jangle of guitar and contagious vocal urging from the first second. In no time, the song climbs over the senses, dark rhythms mixing with a fuzzy entrapment of ears in something which provokes thoughts of The Sonics, early Horrors, and The Hives in devilish union. A lively spark for the spirit, the track provides a great start to the revelry of the album, quickly backed by the more reserved but no less magnetic Cracks In A Colour. The band’s new single, it immediately swings with a graceful gait infused with appealing bass cast shadows. Soon that sixties seeded enterprise becomes a busier eruption of sound and energy, returning to the song’s initial melodic and controlled romancing before alternating between the two from thereon in.
From one pinnacle to another as My Alone stands tall from the off with its own individual sonic flirtation and seduction of ears. Like The Dickies meets Love Buzzard meets Asylums with a touch of Buzzcocks to its hooks and melodic grooves, the song is a glorious blaze of garage rock/pop, with a virulent harmonic invitation as inescapable as the anthemic rhythmic tenacity the track rolls along on before Never Nude slips in with a healthy whiff of seventies punk to its Thee Exciters/The Fleshtones like scent.
Both tracks on their own make Greasewheel an epic must listen, and are powerfully backed by the chaotic punk ‘n’ roll of Crook and the acidic Horrors-esque smooching of Shrink. The first of the two is another high point, its scuzzy heart and raw crescendos delicious tempering and companion to addictive grooves and melody sculpted hooks. Its successor proceeds to writhe with sonic temptation from its first breath, mellowing out into a psych pop seducing seemingly brewed from a blending of shoegaze and psychedelic pop. Equally there is a darker lining to the track which emerges more as it develops and spins a tangy web of guitar crafted suggestiveness littered with heavier rhythmic trespasses.
After the melodic lure of Shrink Wrap, a very brief epilogue like follow-up to its predecessor carrying a Teardrop Explodes air to it, the album concludes with the feisty pop jangle of Be Your Friend. Whipping up energy in body and voice to unite with its own, the song is an irresistible close to a similarly thrilling release. Greasewheel builds on the dramatic introduction of Virgin Kids’ first EP whilst creating its own unique character of sound and potential for bigger and creatively rowdier things to come. We for one cannot wait for their fruition over future releases whilst being a perpetual companion for this treat of a proposition.
Greasewheel is out now on cd, vinyl, and digitally through Fluffer Records in the UK and Burger Records in the US.
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Pete RingMaster 14/03/2016
Copyright RingMaster: MyFreeCopyright
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