New Bomb Turks - Scared Straight, 1996

I do have a music dealer. His name is Max and he runs a shop in downtown Prague called Maximum Underground. He's a nice person who patiently bears with me occupying his headphones and talking nonsense most of the time. It's a pleasantly weird little place, so please support them by stopping by if in the area.

It is thanks to Max I am getting introduced to many records I wouldn't have a chance to be introduced to otherwise. This was exactly the case with New Bomb Turks.

Warning first: neither of their following two albums managed to impress me – one partially, another one at all. But Scared Straight is The Album. Lightning fast, sometimes feeling like being run in a fast forward by the overdriven guitars, it might slightly conceal however doesn't lose a melody for a single second, sparkling with bold vocal modulations here and there. Energy filler and spirit raiser, I find its track list composed at a relatively uniform and quite high level with my personal preferences peaking around the middle – somewhere from Jukebox Lean to Look Alive Jive.

The kicks you'd get from this LP are very different from the kicks packed into the albums I tried to describe so far. It's a pure call for action, a demand for it – someone kicking you in the back to set your bones in motion when you desperately need this but keep hesitating somehow. Scared Straight possesses the spirit of classical rock-n-roll inside the contemporary punk package. Not a proper goodnight record for sure.

Give it a try.


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