Album Review

Hot Gossip – You Look Faster When You Are Young

• 31st Jul 2009

There’s something about rock ‘n’ roll with a European accent that really pushes my buttons. Yeah, it’s the same three chords, and possibly even the same three songs, but where lines like “when you got a car I’m ready to steal it” sound all sexily impoverished and Iggy Pop-like from the mouths of Hot Gossip (who hail, incidentally, from Milan), they’re frankly all too believable when sung by Dave from Wigan.

You Look Faster When You Are Young is not a meditation on the deteriorating mobility of the older generation, but the debut album from hotly-tipped Italian rock ’n’ rollers Hot Gossip. It aims to do absolutely nothing new whatsoever, concentrating instead upon channelling the energies of the Rolling Stones, The Fratellis and The Kinks into twelve tracks that sound quite a lot like the Rolling Stones, The Fratellis and The Kinks. In fact, You Look Faster When You Are Young sounds so much like the Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Fratellis that I’m almost 100% certain at least two members of the band think they are the Rolling Stones, The Kinks and The Fratellis. And the other one, no doubt, has Mick Jagger’s face tattooed on his arse.

Cops With Telephones kicks off with the feebly-disguised riff from Waterloo Sunset, while Call The Rangers.. oh I give up. You Look Faster When You Are Young should be subtitled World’s Greatest Rock ’n’ Roll Hits Ever! and decorated with a picture of an Italian wedding band – but hey, what’s not to like? Um, the truly godawful Klaxons-aping track And Again, that’s what. The only possible explanation for the presence of such a TUMOUR on the surface of an otherwise enjoyable debut album is some kind of rift in the time-space continuum in which Mick Jagger was temporarily replaced with the fat one from the Klaxons and confused little Guilio to such an extent that he recorded this track UNDER FALSE PRETENCES and plans to remove it from the album as soon as possible. Either that, or Hot Gossip actually quite like the Klaxons. Which is not a possibility I’m prepared to consider.

Aside from And Again (is it still there?) being totally, like, young and dumb, dude, is what You Look Faster When You Are Young is all about – and lines like “You just got here, how do you do/You can find me easy down at the zoo” sound so much dumber in a foreign accent. Believe me, in this kind of snotty rock ‘n’ roll that’s a good thing. Look what it did for Howlin’ Pelle.

My buttons? Consider them pushed.