NetLab

Tracks:

01. Child He Die [0:02:23.63]
02. Queen [0:02:41.22]
03. Glad That You're Not Me [0:03:57.69]
04. Very Small Child [0:03:03.29]
05. L.A.Highway [0:03:31.74]
06. Nose Job [0:03:53.31]
07. Rolling Railroad Wago [0:03:04.59]
08. Oxford Donna [0:02:54.24]
09. Mainhorse Cowboy [0:03:39.42]
10. Turtle Dove [0:03:27.72]

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Upon its reissue The Rats' First Long Player was quite rightly reviewed in a positive light. There's something refreshing in the heavy-handed, trashy guitar and thudding beats which sets it aside from the so-called sophisticated rock of today. It's like your Granddad listening to all your wistful noodling, impatiently ripping the guitar out of your hands with a cry of "for God's sake play the bloody thing!" and thrashing out the power chords while you clamp your hands over your ears. The Rats' music demands the wearing of the heaviest pair of platform boots to stomp your way through hardwood floors while punching your fist in the air like a demented primate.

The Rats were never really a band in the true sense of the word, which may go some way to explain their short lifespan. The band itself already existed as CWT when paired with vocalist David Kubinec who came to the party with a clutch of readymade songs. They were launched at the back end of the glam revolution, when all the allure of glitter, silver lame and feather boas had begun to shift from the coolly extravagant to the vaguely ridiculous. As a sub-genre the era has since become known as junkshop glam, as if to emphasise its throwaway nature. If music was a huge junkshop The Rats would be discovered in a dusty corner filed under "ephemera".

For all First Long Player's initial appeal repeated plays bring to light its failings. The seeds are sown with the slower numbers "Glad That You're Not Me" and "Very Small Child". The combination of Kubinec's scratchy voice, lyrics which reach for depth but wallow in the shallow end, and a band obviously less comfortable toning down the thrash and bash, kills the momentum. So much so, when they return to the more familiar sleazy ground of "Oxford Donna", the connection between artist and audience has been damaged.

Before the drop-off point lie a number of tarnished gems. "L.A. Highway" is your typical driving with the top down boogie. "Nose Job" (is it about drugs?) and "Rolling Railroad Wagon" melds trash rock with rhythm and blues. "Turtle Dove" has subsequently become the standard bearer for the whole junkshop glam movement and deserved better treatment.

Looked at objectively, the reason The Rats created little more than a ripple back in the seventies is they were lumped onto the tail end of a dying phenomena whose gaudy glamour was badly decaying. Given a fair wind and a sizeable measure of luck they may have been able to merge with rock's mainstream. As it is we're left with an enjoyable slice of what might have been.