The Polecats - Polecats Are Go!
#578
June 1981
The Polecats
Polecats Are Go!
Genre: Rockabilly Revival
2.5 out of 5
Highlights:
Black Magic
Requisite 80s cover:
There are a bunch of cover tunes here and they are fine. Like “Little Pig”. It’s good. It’s fine. This revival genre deserves better, though. Same for “Big Green Car”.
Their version of Bowie’s “John, I’m Only Dancing” adds absolutely nothing and has me reaching for my Bowie box set.
Oy. Opening with a cover. You know how I feel about this. They would need to be crushingly fantastic, ala Joan Jett.
Sadly, they aren’t. Instead they come across very very New Wave nasal-meets-rockabilly. Almost as though The Rezillos caught the nostalgia wave.
The shame of it is that they second track, “Red. Ready, Amber” is much more electric and what we would hope from this kind of rekkid. However, whoever mixed it seems to hate the band. And then you look it up and, yep, it’s Dave Edmunds. Sometimes he has a tendency to mix the instruments to high and all level, washing out the vocals. Fortunately Stray Cats could overcome this.
Polecats can’t.
This is a perfectly acceptable entry to this genre however their catchiest hit, the one we all love (at least I did) “Make a Circuit with me” was not on this, or any other album. It’s a terrific tune but they never hit that height on this one. That song had always made me curious about the band but never enough to seek them out.
Boz Boorer would go on to work on Adam Ant’s Viva Le Rock album and help him with his revival on “Wonderful” and extensively with Morrissey.
Missed?: Meh. Stray Cats did this better.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJO_QgodSgs&list=PLlvn8uktX5Lur62diFdjUHiAMDKVFXrF7
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