RATING:RRRR
LABEL: Shotgun Generation
REVIEW BY: Alan Holloway
Say what you like about the French (seriously - they don’t care what YOU think), they’re not a bunch that you expect a great deal from when it comes to rock music. Yeah, yeah, there’s been a few, but it’s not exactly Sweden, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, Pleasure Addiction are a recent addition to the roster of French Bands You’ve Never Heard Of, and they’re following up their debut ‘INdependence’ with this offering, which according to the title should be more, well, ballsy.
As you may gather from the none too subtle cover and band name, Pleasure Addiction are camped firmly with the sort of bands who use enough hairspray to gas ISIS and enough lipstick to make all the corpses pretty. When done correctly, a bit of wham bam thank you glam is an enjoyable thing, and Pleasure Addiction certainly seem to understand this, as ‘Extra Balls’ is chock full of upbeat riff laden bouncy tracks, the sort of thing Poison used to do once upon a time. It helps that they kick it all off with the single ‘Don’t Let Me Down’, which is an outstanding example of the genre. On the downside is ‘Heaven & Hell’ which suffers greatly from being a slower song, highlighting the averageness of vocalist Butcho (wouldn’t be a glam band without silly names, right?), something the faster tracks manage to cover up with their wall of sound. In fairness to him, though, Butcho’s voice does sound right for the sort of music that’s being played, he’s just not a balladeer.
I hear a lot of bad Glam Rock in my job, and I’m happy to report that Pleasure Addiction don’t fall into the swampy pit of shite that swallows up so many others. They have a good energy to their sound, and have tapped into that mid to late Eighties vibe with a rare passion. There’s nothing deep or meaningful here, but there doesn’t always have to be. Check out ‘Don’t Le Me Down’ on YouTube, and if that floats your boat you could do worse than grabbing some extra balls as well.
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