Album review: The Stupids: 'The Kids Don't Like It'

THE STUPIDS: 'The Kids Don't Like It' (Boss Tuneage)

Calling your band ‘The Stupids’ is either a very foolish or very brave move; critics across the land will jump at the chance to work wonders with the pun, describing you as a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’, more than living up to the name. Of course, the eighties skate punks know this; in fact, they positively encourage it. On the evidence of ‘The Kids Don’t Like It’, their sixteen track, thirty minute reunion LP, they still wear their imbecilic personalities on their sleeves, proudly showing the world just how brain dead they remain.

As is standard, the album is a series of lowest common denominator punk blasts, generally no more than two minutes in length, that trawl the spectrum of adolescent woes in an effort to cobble together some of the most pointless lyrics this side of a Hollywood Undead record. So we have ‘Drumshop Arsehole’, a brief hissy fit about, you guessed it, someone who wronged the band in a drum shop. Then there’s the delightful ‘I Was Sexually Harassed’, a boring, one note thrash-out that’s as sincere as your average Bloodhound Gang LP and about 1/10th as funny. ‘Middle Aged Punk’, meanwhile, actually deviates from the heads-down, full throttle racket of the remaining tracks by including – shock horror – a riff and a pace change, but, sure enough, it descends into the usual unlistenable drivel within about twenty seconds.

It doesn’t help that Tom Withers delivers his vocals in the style of a drowning rat, choosing to annihilate any semblance of melody in the process. He’s also downplayed in the mix, as if the producer realised just how patently awful he was and tried desperately to reduce the listener’s pain. Unfortunately, this also makes the lyrics virtually indecipherable, so Withers is left seeming like a tone-deaf, shrieking madman, twittering on about God knows what.

Of course, none of this is new ground for The Stupids. They’ve always been this awful, typifying all that went hopelessly wrong with punk. The movement’s essential point – that anyone could do the whole rock star thing – began to overshadow the impetus behind it, the kick to not simply stand for an oppressive, conservative establishment. Consequently, idiocy and machismo overtook insight and intellect, and bands like this began equating punk with getting pissed down the pub and throwing curse words around a lot. ‘The Kids Don’t Like It’, regrettably, is no different; it’s mindless, derivative bollocks, the antithesis of all that punk was and still is. Give it up, guys. Just stop it. Now. (1/10)