The Dead 60s: The Dead 60's : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

The Dead 60's are four liverpool boys beholden to the artier side of early-Eighties post-punk, laying spectral keyboard noises over skittish rock-disco grooves and working up basement homages to the Clash's Sandinista!. Their debut is packed with rubbery bass lines, ice-pick guitar, dub textures and speechlike declamation, all of which they wrap up in a sheen of detached cool. What's missing are songs. "Nowhere" and "Red Light" could work as Gang of Four-style tension jams, but the Dead 60's sound uninspired, plodding along and deploying near-dadaist refrains like they're just another sound effect. On "Loaded Gun," the Dead 60's rev the tempo and come up with one of the album's few memorable lyrics, but even when they're firing on all cylinders, their grooves are both overstuffed and brittle. Retro, schmetro -- The Dead 60's is just another species of humdrum art rock.