“Watch the way they hit those G strings!”

'Clap your hands if you like Rock Ballads!' said the guy on bass with The Young Playthings, a triangle of unlikely! A school boy, a college boy and golfing-on-a-sunday boy! They definately played with us, sometimes you felt they were men, sometimes kids, sometimes romantic, sometimes mushy, loud, soft, sober, drunk..etc. They had American accents and wore stonewash jeans together with their power pop definitions of love, ladies (which they like!), slow dancing and tom foolery, made for tunes with theme tune appeal.

This was the mere veneer, of course, just as you're trying to remember who did that infectious theme tune to 'Friends' ( The Rembrants by the way!) and that musical relief in 'Something About Mary'. The Young Playthings threw that bouncy ball straight out of the playground boundary and into an unsuspecting neighbours window pane! Underneath the pop devices were more indie and sometimes country parts to the songs eeked out with touches of irony. A tune to slow dance to comprised of school boy stories getting drunk where 'poor Christina thew up in a bush'! Very romantic, remember the days?!

By the third song, which screamed seamlessly from the second, they were adding suprise slide solos and thrash wig outs?!! 'Hot Sex with a Girl I [Love]' brought a Greenday fun punk mash while playfully cavorting around. Just about remembering that they were attatched to planet Earth by guitar leads and the very conventions, of their own songs, demanding them to return to the microphone once in a while!

A very sweaty catoclysm of pop, indie, country devices playfully clashed together leaving you, puzzingly, delighted!

Watch the way they hit those G strings!

© The Moles Club Live Review 2005