Imagine Blondie reincarnated as a Brit garage band. Lizzie Wood does a whale of a job playing catty sex kitten at the mic, and the boys in the band service her capably. While plenty of the lyrics are clever, there's very little subtlety to this disc. Wood is into put downs, but her style is more Eddie Izzard than Oscar Wilde. Not necessarily a bad thing, mind you. You've gotta dig the groove the folks lay down--it's got a veneer of faux sophistication laid over a slowly rotting core. A lot of folks will no doubt find this annoying, but what the hell. I'm a sucker for anything that satirizes continental condescension. Oh yeah, a lot of this is a joke. I'm sure there are sincere moments, but they are few and far between. Mostly, this is just tasty trash. Just my style.

The Weeds BLOW! The Seeds STINK! And the Leeches SPIT BLOOD! That's today's biology lesson. The Leeches hail from Britain and play what they call a "high-energy brand of twisted anglo-ironic artpunk." Interestingly enough, that's not a bad description! Their guitarist Andy Cooper double-tracks the crankle and fuzz with raw electrical jankling and bashing as a female vocalist toys with losers' emotions by jumping from cute-and-detached to bitter-as-a-schoolmarm in the time it takes most women to have sex when Mark Prindle is around. I don't mean to brag, but it's true - any time a woman has sex with me, we're finished pretty quickly and I can make it home in time for Tic-Tac-Dough. Don't thank me now! The closest approximation of a comparison that I'd care to make for the Creative Leeches is that they SORT of have a sound kind of a LITTLE comparable a TAD to The Fall's more reverbed material - with the crankly, "occasionally bordering on rockabilly but too creative to be rockabilly" sound and style. And in 28 minutes, your heart will demonstrate appreciation for numerous genres torn apart at their hands, including happy midtempo smart-tones (their heavenly tinny/acoustic/guitar solo anthem "Hey" is even better than the Pixies song of the same name!), brash punkers (you name 'em, you got 'em! I suppose that sort of follows though, doesn't it. How could you name them if you don't own the CD. Odds are you haven't heard them on the radio or "The Real World"TV.) and darker mood pieces like "Obedience" with its queasy stomach-churning low-end vomit swoops tempting your tummy with the taste of nuts and honey ? it's a honey of an "O" - it's "O"-bedience. The Leeches are one of the most consistently smart and entertaining new batches of songwriter/musicians that I've hapt across in quite some time - and they're not even part of that insane hardcore punk/metal screaming movement I keep talking about all the time. Any fan of The Fall or early Gang of Four or Killing Joke should buy a copy of Suck today. They have a classic double-guitar hyperactive artpunk sound (I can't BELIEVE they only have one guitarist - these are songs that sound like they were written by TWO guitarists! But it's just one guy!!!! ONE GUY!!!!!), but without sounding like a copy of ANYBODY. They do their own thing and it sounds terrific. A high 8 from me! And I'm not just saying that because one of the guys likes my web site a lot!

The Leeches are a buzzy and fuzzy band from London whose album, Suck, is endearingly dinky. The Leeches have art-punk poise,speedy songs and goofy strain. These Leeches can drain our blood anytime.

I was going to update yesterday, but this album was way too perfectly suited for Halloween, so I waited. Timing is everything, you know. And I'm glad I did. The Leeches spit out a Grand Guignol brand of rockabilly punk that few do well save the Cramps (and the Damned, but they're sort of their own category). Suck feels just like it should: Like the sonic equivalent of being bathed in gunk-filled water sprayed out of a rusted showerhead in the crappiest mold-stained single-wide in the crappiest trailer park on the bayou. This is clearly what the Leeches were aiming for -- they even have a song called "Trailer Trash," in which the slatternly-bored voice of singer Lizzi Wood recounts a day in the life of the Wal-Mart masses -- so good on them for hitting it with an almost disturbing sense of veracity (The Leeches themselves aren't bayou trailer trash, despite the song and their album cover, if for no other reason that they're from London). The fun-filled creepiness doesn't end there, kiddies. Just in time for Halloween, I'm proud to present "Slice Up," a paean to spousal murder, in which Wood, ever the troublemaker, suggests to her married lover that they drug the wife and part her out like beef (I'm sure in real life Wood is a delightful person who never misses a prayer meeting). The song would probably be more disturbing if Wood's weren't so flirty and cootchie-coo in the song ("I'm waiting," she coos, as if tapping her adorable little feet for her lover to make with the chainsaw), and if the song itself didn't sound like a soundtrack snippet from an especially cheesy Z-grade slasher flick from the early 60s. Obviously, Suck isn't for everyone, but then, outside of oxygen, what is? I'm enjoying the hell out of it, and be be quite honest, any band that can take a song about going down to the garden and eating worms (album closer "Worms") and turn it both into a kiss-off to annoying people and a stompable romp through the mosh pit gets my vote for a band that's got the goods. Suck definitely doesn't. As far as Halloween trick or treats go, it's in the "treat" category.