Hup to standard (Hup - Wonder Stuff)

Member Name: moronboy

Product:	Hup - Wonder Stuff
Date:	16/11/00 (51 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The band at their best

Disadvantages: Downhill from here

I may be wrong, but I'm certain that this album was originally going to be called 'Moan Moan Bastard Moan' (corrections from Stuff obsessives welcome). Anyway, apart from the miscalculation of the new title 'Hup', this is a superb album, slick and more commercial than its predecessor 'The Eight-Legged Groove Machine'. I thought the Wonder Stuff would go ballistic after this, but it never happened, and they just stayed a kind of middling Top 40 band without ever quite hitting the bigtime.

Anyway, the two standouts are the epic 'Thirty Years in the Bathroom' and the acid 'Radio Ass-Kiss', which recalls the marvellously vituperative B-side 'Astley in the noose'. They both marry genuinely abrasive sounds with wit and superb lyrics, a real step up from the usual rock / grunge nonsense about death, destruction and the like. Most of the other tracks are smart, although I never liked 'Golden Green' even though it was a hit, because it sounds like the kind of folky stuff they backed themselves into subsequently.

Generally though, this is a corking album.

Summary: