Bubblegum Ramones/Runaways type all-girl punk pop that breaks no new ground, but then why complain when it's so busy reclaiming lost old ground for an increasingly turgid world currently dominated by filthy, filthy crap like The Riff Randells' fellow Canadians, Sum 41. I know it's been said a million times before, and I know it's lame to hang a review of one particular band on how much you hate another particular band, but Sum 41 et al make just the most vile kind of music that human ears can hear and anything would sound good simply by virtue of being different to them. The Riff Randells SOUND TOTALLY DIFFERENT to Sum 41 and this is their strongest point. The original songs, "Double Cross" and "All I Know" are like bad Donnas tracks but the covers are mostly well chosen and manage to retain all the essential virtue of the originals. "Mickey" is a great pop song and they don't ruin it by trying to be ironic or anything like that, "Robot Man" was rubbish when The Gymslips originally recorded it, and it's rubbish now, but the bar in the world of punk pop is set pretty low at the moment so I forgive them. The real reasons to love, or at least tolerate, this mini-album are that it is a party record - it even has the word "party" in the title - and the closing number, "Japanese Boy", is a deliciously calculated attempt to curry favour among the drooling Japanese male teen hordes. This is a cool thing, and in a world where punk has long since forgotten what the word "cool" means, this is a happy reminder. -Ian Martin, Oct.20.04.

Parties Are My Favourite