#770 The White Wires - WWII

Perfectly brisk, fun, toe-tapping, chugga-chugga punk rock out of Ottawa, evoking The Buzzcocks' proto-pop-punk propulsiveness. The problem is the vocals, which take too much of the edge off, ringing too weak and too meekly pretty alongside the brash guitars, tipping the album off of that careful nasty-nice balance all pop-punk needs to pull off. There's not enough left musically to justify the loss of swagger, and the album ends up being, again, very toe-tapping, but little more 3/5