The Spasm Babies are a strange beast indeed. An Edinburgh band who seem to revel in the spirit and the bands of Glasgow, with the Pastels and Belle and Sebastian getting a mention as well as more far flung influences like The Pixies. All sounds good so far, you may say, and you would be right. Here’s the tricky part though, I find it quite difficult to be critical of a band who are having so much fun doing what they are doing and clearly don’t take themselves too seriously.
They sound like they may be a great band to watch live but the album doesn’t really hang together, It’s full of some quite disparate elements with songs ranging from two-minute punchy rock songs to ‘Bad Seedian’ (does that really work as a description?) murder ballads.
Vacuum Spasm Babies is not a name you are likely to see on the next ‘Now! That’s what I Call…’ album, and it’s probably safe to say you won’t see much of them on whatever E4 are calling their early Sunday morning pop show at the moment. In parts ‘Whipping Clowns’ is a great piece of off-kilter lo-f indie music but just misses that something special that the likes of The Vaselines or The Pastels have.