WRITE HOME - The Soda Pop Kids (Full Breach Kicks)
Rock’n’roll has always prided itself on its outsider reputation. It’s fair to say that over the years – especially after the marketing and commerce people got their filthy lucred hands on the genre and turned it into just another 
Madison Avenue branded commodity – the outsider thing has just become part of wider commodity fetishism. Bands like Green Day start off as errant kids with loud guitars and exuberant social habits and are gradually appropriate by the capitalist machine (though, to their credit, Green Day have tried in recent years to alter their image, but will never return to those Kerplunk! days).
The Soda Pop Kids come across as irreverent kids out for a good time, and for all the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll they can stuff into their trousers and formative years. “Write Home” isn’t anything groundbreaking – you can argue the toss about how derivative of The Ramones, The Dead Boys and the Dead Kennedys it is – but it does exhibit a sort of honesty and sincerity that’s generally endearing.
The design of the album insert – a series of bits of scrap paper with hand written missives – suggests a band on the road writing home to describe the emotional and social minutae of its daily existence. There’s nothing particularly incisive here – viz. “Ya See I Rock too Hard and I Just Can’t Stop/I Roll Coz I’m Wild and I Just Can’t Stop” in “Chained With Your Love” (a sort of Ramones-style intepretation of the philosophy underpinning Hank Williams’ “Rambin’ Man”) – but it is played out at a speed and intensity that suggests the lyrics are just there as an after thought to the sonic attack. That said, I was quite taken with the SE Hinton quality real-life nihilism mixed with hope of “Electric Blood”, as vocalist Johnny P Jewels sings of ‘walking down the road of life with no real place to go/mediocrity surrounding me – they you come by like an injection to the brain/plug me in, rev me up, make me fucking roll again” – and the Ramones simplicity of the guitar assault isn’t too bad either
“Shots of Whiskey” mixes the mindless emotional anarchy of youth with a bruising 50s bar room feel, topped off with some masculine bravado – ‘tears are useless here – that’s just admitting defeat/I’d rather self-destruct them accept my place on Lonely Street’. Then there’s the Little Richard meets punk rock mania of “Mona (Stay Away)”, ebbing and flowing between a 200 rpm attack to a slow rolling dance-room feel.
The latter part of the album celebrates the 50s in greater style – not just the doo-wapping rock style, but also the birth of the teenager concept, though the Soda Pop persona is more Dee Dee Ramone (but maybe not as self-destructive) than Jame Dean. Yet on “Get Tight” it’s a lament for the attitude that’s been lost over the year – and the band’s protest for getting tight is far more credible than The Donnas’ increasingly pissweak calls to get skintight, alright. The final track, "Leavin’ Kill City", is probably the most representative track – one moment it’s doing Chuck Berry riffs, the next it’s running up the rock scale like Bill Haley on speed, the next it’s churning out post-Ramones riffs at a frenetic rate, the next it’s doing some faux-Beach Boys harmonies, and the time it’s lamenting everything that’s wrong in the narrator’s fishbowl youthful existence. Nihilism has never been so exhausting.
The Soda Pop Kids are really just kids having a good time, and that’s something that’s always good to hear and see. I’m not if their parents would be reassured or disturbed by their writings home, but at least they’re enjoying themselves.- Patrick Emery
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