Wheatus and Sparks the Rescue

There’s no real doubting ‘Teenage Dirtbag’s status as one of the biggest hits of the noughties; the flipside of that success, for Wheatus, is that it’s pretty firmly secured them one-hit wonder status. Everybody knows that song, but plenty of people couldn’t even name the band behind it, much less tell you what they got up to next; those with sharper memories might recall that their next single, a cover of Erasure’s ‘A Little Respect’, was a reasonable chart success, too, but after that, they pretty much fell of the radar, following a label dispute over their poorly-promoted second album that would eventually lead to them reissuing it under the name ‘Suck Fony’. In fact, though, Wheatus are still going strong today, and their relative anonymity these days has at least afforded them the possibility of experimentation, recording their last album, The Valentine LP, in the super high-fidelity DSD format. They continue to tour the UK, too, on an annual basis, with their latest run of dates set for October; if you’re after a quick shot of nostalgia, you could do far worse than check them out - and, just in case you were wondering, no, they haven’t done a Radiohead: ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ remains very much pride of place in the setlists.

Hailing from Portland, Maine, hardly a place known for its rich history of rock music, Sparks the Rescue have nevertheless gotten plenty done - and made quite the name for themselves - in the nine years that they’ve been together so far; after moving away from the early post-hardcore sound that they found themselves flirting with - something of a hangover from the bands that the various members had found themselves playing in in the lead up to the formation of Sparks the Rescue - they’ve moved towards a more straightforward alternative rock palette, flecked with influence from pop punk, too; it’s perhaps the direct nature of that latter style that’s led them to focus heavily on quickfire EP releases down the years, with five of those as compared to only two full-length albums and, indeed, two in the last three years. The most recent of those, Truth Inside the Fiction, feature eight tracks, but still comes in at under twenty seven minutes in duration; their recent tour in support of it certainly fit with that ethos, too, with the pace never waning and the short, sharp shocks of pop punk coming thick and fast; they’re overdue a return to the UK, though, so look out for dates soon.