published: 5 /
3 /
2008
Label:
Brille Records
Format: CD
Fantastic indie punk-pop on debut album from Australian all-girl group Operator Please, unfortunately marred by appalling production work on singer Amanadah Wilkinson's vocals
Review
Say you’ve got a really good pop-star voice. A voice flecked with Stevie Nicks’ cracked vulnerability and Alex Turner’s resigned world-weariness - but that still sounds totally your own. And say that voice elevates your band from indie punk-pop wunderkids to genuine hot prospects, sprinkling sweet ballads and slashing guitar workouts alike with superstar fairydust.
Well, you’d think the knob-twiddlers in the sound booth would know better than to nip out for a fag while you recorded your album’s vocals, leaving you sounding like Kylie Minogue, wouldn’t you? True, Kylie’s inoffensive helium warble is unlikely to make you want to go out and commit mass murder. But that’s only because it’s unlikely to make you feel strongly enough to go out and do anything.
Operator Please, on the other hand, make us want to jump for joy for hours on end – regardles of what they do to singer Amandah Wilkinson’s voice. Like a loveable Frankenstein’s monster, ‘Yes Yes Vindictive’ is an old head on young shoulders: the assured songcraft of a seasoned Tin Pan Alley hitmaker grafted onto the boisterous physicality of the Bash Street Kids.
And if it can make you feel fresh as punnet of super-ripe strawberries despite all that vocal weirdness, what’s the next one - the one where they get it right - going to do? Oh, Amandah’s a feisty one, by the way. Wonder what she did to the guilty studio bod in revenge. And whether anyone recorded it on their camera phone. Anyone? We’ve got money. Name your price.
Track Listing:-
1
Zero! Zero!
2
Get What You Want
3
Just a Song About Ping Pong
4
Cringe
5
Two for My Seconds
6
Terminal Disease
7
6/8
8
Yes Yes
9
Other Song
10
Ghost
11
Leave It Alone
12
Pantomime
13
Rocking Horse
14
One Yellow Button
15
Whip It!
16
Ouch Burn
17
Waiting by the Car
18
Icicle
19
Leave It Alone (David E. Sugar's St. Mark's Remix)
20
Leave It Alone (New Young Pony Club Rework)
21
Just a Song About Ping Pong (Kissy Sell Out's White Stallion Extended Remix)
22
Two for My Seconds (The Teenagers Remix)