\"…It's about the crash of a drumbeat and a righteous sneer…". That's the beginning of the liner notes to this debut LP from self-described "London 6-piece hate-fueled gospel/trash/punk soul revue," The Action Time. Here's what I know about The Action Time: There are three boys, three girls, and they're all daft as a brush. They manage to rip through 11 garage-punk anthems in a sleek 29 minutes, and there's lots of organ, feedback, and songs about, you know, going out on Saturday night and stuff. \nWe're at a weird place in the pop music world now -- it used to be about British groups imitating American musical forms, but bands like The Action Time are aping those British groups who were imitating the Americans…get it? Totally postmodern, dude. To that end, the semi-manifesto that appears on the inside sleeve ("alcoholic poetry burning cigarette holes in your top 40 trash") is more shorthand for rock 'n' roll hedonism than an exhortation to take to the streets with guitars. \nNot that The Time are betraying any sort of revolutionary punk aesthetic, which was never really indicative of the genre anyhow. Johnny Rotten didn't want "Anarchy in the U.K.," he just wanted wankers to leave him alone so he wouldn't get beaten up after football games. Maybe The Clash were political once, but I saw Joe Strummer on MTV last year enthusing about Blink-182, so there's another insurrection deferred. \nBack to the album: It's really a lot of fun. The members all have goofy stage names like Miss Spent Youth and CC Rider, and there's a lot of guitar slop flying around, a welcome antidote to the big-budget overproduction of some of England's more popular guitar-pop (cough...Oasis...cough). Stax by way of Attractions keyboards are another popular touchstone, as well as girl-group-with-maracas backing vocals. And if it's all been done before, that's really neither here nor there, because it's not a rock band's job to change the world, just to make it fun for the duration of an LP.
The Action Time
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