The Undertones’ tardiness was a virtue. They may have played their first gigs in 1976, but they didn’t emerge with their debut single, Teenage Kicks, until late 1978 and their debut album wasn’t released until May the following year. By that point, alternative/indie bands were experimenting with dub and funk and lyrically exploring the heart of darkness – in a word, postpunk – whereas The Undertones, all spotty skin and C&A-urchin chic, were still singing about, well, chocolate and girls to a distinctly perky, punky racket. And amid all the heavy death disco and existential angst they sounded utterly refreshing, a hark back to simpler times.
Their first album, reissued here in its original sleeve (unlike the October ’79 re-release including Teenage Kicks), includes Here Comes The Summer and Jimmy Jimmy and suggests the band were as steeped in glam and 60s pop as they were in punk. On Wrong Way, Feargal Sharkey’s tremulous warble is at odds with the period snarl, but in its expression of insecurity (‘Stop treating me this way, girl’) it’s just as radical.
By 1980’s Hypnotised, John and Damian O’Neill’s songs were becoming increasingly sophisticated, with the single My Perfect Cousin the best-known example. But it’s Wednesday Week that offered the most tantalising signpost to where The Undertones were headed, towards the soul-psych shimmers of 1981’s Positive Touch.
