Review: The Cute Lepers – Can’t Stand Modern Music

The Cute Lepers – “Can’t Stand Modern Music”
(Blackheart Records)

The Cute Lepers feature Steve E. Nix and Steve Kicks of the Briefs, and were originally known as Steve E. Nix & the Cute Lepers. After releasing a couple of singles, they shortened the name and signed to Joan Jett’s Blackheart Records. Five of the tracks have previously appeared on those earlier singles on Damaged Goods and 1-2-3-4 Go!, and don’t appear to have been re-recorded for this record. In other words, it’s pretty lo-fi.

Still, the nervy pop (or “now wave,” as bands like the Cute Lepers, Briefs, Clorox Girls, et al are being dubbed) has an edgy sensibility that hearkens back to the early days of punk rock, when bands like the Ramones took as much from the Shangri-Las and other ‘60s girl pop groups as they did from Nuggets type acts. The best tracks take a little of that hip-shaking garage and a little of that sing along quality inherent in all those girl-groups, and the very best insert a little Cars-style New Wave. “So Screwed Up” even has a bit of “Just What I Needed” in the intro.

To be fair, tho’, this album is a little samey. I’ve had it since SXSW and only now got around to reviewing it, and that’s only because it came out this week. It hasn’t made it into rotation here at the house the way I thought it would after I bought the “Terminal Boredom” single. That song is pretty much the template for everything else on the album – very much a case of the title playing a major part in the chorus, to the point where you could sing along after a verse has gone by.

“Terminal Boredom”