album review from Q magazine
Robert Sandall

Lovely

Maybe they're reviving it, maybe it never went away; at any rate here it comes again, that classic pop genre of the late 1970s-the short, sharp punk ditty. Buzzcocks and The Ramones were its best original exponents, well able in their different ways to capture that delicate balance between the macho toiling of solid-body electric and the airy innocence of a simple, catchy tune. Now, 10 years later, three young men from Coventry and a girl singer they found through an advert have put it back into the Top 5 with their first single release for a major label, Crash. Track one, side one of their debut album, Crash is a song which is as difficult to dislike as it is impossible to defend against charges of blatant copyism.

Otherwise, there is a one-note guitar solo on Spacehead, guitars breaking up into white noise-the famous buzzsaw effect-at regular intervals, as well as all the three chord tricks you could wish for. Tracy Tracy's voice has just the right mixture of dreaminess and perkiness to preside over the hectic scampering of the lads' instruments, and nothing seems to go on for more than two and a half minutes.

The Primitives have certainly not been blessed with a very original songwriter in Perfect Paul, but he can embroider some neat guitar arpeggios around his little hums. And producer Paul Samson holds monotony at bay by treating every song as if it were being played by a different group. On Run Baby Run he makes them sound like a sort of acoustic pop duo and the album basically stops off at all points from there to the hell-for-leather thrash of Stop Killing Me, one of their early indie single.

Throughout Lovely there is an amiable spirit of cheerful perseverance in the face of natural limitations. This, given that The Primitives have already managed to blag their way on to Wogan as well as stealing into the Top 10, should guarantee them a future presence, even if it doesn't make them a force to be reckoned with.