Snuff

Snuff’s an eclectic band so it’s unsurprising that this is an eclectic album. Punk bands have a habit of recording covers in either tribute or jest however the band’s motives in choosing these tracks are hard to figure out. It may be a bit of both, however the idea of doing something “weird for the sake of weird” certainly wouldn’t be out of character for Snuff.

The album leads off with “Sound Of The Underground,” originally by a group I’d never heard of called Girls Aloud. It turned out my naivety was cultural: Girls Aloud are a pop band that won a British reality-music show circa 2003. However the source of the song is secondary here; Snuff turn it into a blistering example of the melodic Cockney thrash they’re known for. It’s followed with “A Lovers Concerto” by girl group The Toys and “Song To The Siren” by Tim Buckley. The 60s material gives Duncan a chance to play with some soaring pop chorus’, but the songs are instrumentally nothing out of the ordinary for the band.

Covering a Dylan song is generally a bad idea, but I can’t find a lot to fault in Snuff’s version of “You’re a Big Girl Now.” They don’t exactly break out the acoustics, but there’s a melancholy to the group’s rendition of the Blood On The Tracks song that’s respectful. From there on in the song choices are increasingly unpredictable, including old jazz standard “Bye Bye Blackbird,” Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock” and a pair of Japanese tracks (by Teruhiko Inoue and Yuji Koga if that means anything to you). In the end though, aside from the language and a few familiar chorus’, these 9 tracks are textbook Snuff. Whether that’s a good or bad thing depends if you like Snuff, which I do.

While Greasy Hair Makes Money isn’t the proper follow up to 2003’s Disposable Income, it’s sound is classic Snuff and well worth owning for fans. Snuff’s ultimate success as a band is that no one sounds quite like them, which is true even when they’re playing other musicians’ songs.