PRECIOUS JULES – PRECIOUS JULES
From the ‘menacing’ two-note guitar riff to the way that vocalist Kim Salmon rolls his R’s, The Precious Jules Theme – the opening number to this debut album – is about as reminiscent of the Sex Pistols as it’s possible to be without actually being the Sex Pistols. This latest project from Aussie punk veteran Salmon has been billed in the press release as ‘polished pop-rock’, but what we get instead is garage-punk in its roughest, most throwaway form. This just-don’t-give-a-**** attitude permeates tracks such as Ramones sound-a-like Cheap ’n’ Nasty and A Necessary Evil, the opening line of which is “Let’s not waste any time – let’s just get wasted!” But even if Salmon has purportedly been making punk rock since 1976, the don’t-care attitude which made that era so enticing now sounds merely nostalgic. Salmon can actually sing reasonably well when he wants to, but he only wants to occasionally – for most of the album we are treated to his Johnny-Rotten-impersonating sneer. There are occasionally inspired moments, such as the fuzzy funk of Too Uptite and the brooding blues of Shine Some Darkness on Me. The duo have insisted that they don’t want to be compared to The White Stripes or The Black Keys, but there’s no danger of that happening here. Those who don’t think Precious Jules are attempting to relive punk’s glory days probably think they’re a young band who wish that they’d been there in the first place.
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