This week is 10 years since The Mint Chicks released their debut record and to celebrate the anniversary (which fits in with Record Store Day this Saturday), they've re-released the 13 tracks on vinyl for the first time.
And it still sounds f***ing great.
If a new act released this now, it would be one of the most exciting records to come out this year. Sure, the band went on to bigger, stronger, more accomplished things, but F**k The Golden Youth captures a sense of total freedom that will forever be electrifying.
This record might've been The Mint Chicks at their most rampantly abrasive and obnoxiously posturing in some senses, but it's still full of brilliant melodies and lyrical ideas, and is so primally physical and muscular in its rhythm, that in among the fitful, frenzied, punk noise, it has some beautiful moments.
The very end of the album, the guitar line that fades out You're Bored Because You're Boring is a sublimely warm outro; Take It I Don't Want It has a great groove; and Kody Nielson's singing on tracks like Opium of the People and the title song is surprisingly soulful underneath the frantic riffery.
As a band they seemed to revel in being called things like rebellious and resistant, but in truth the album is much less precocious than that.
It's full of respect and some serious consideration around the idea that the older generation aren't the enemy.
But it's also peppered with the passing sounds of a bunch of dudes having one heck of a good time in a Northland bach, and the recording is so excellently visceral it takes you right back to all of their manic, buzzing-on-a-knife-edge, sweaty gigs, and makes you want to thrash around to I Don't Want To Grow Old just one more time. Or many more times.
These songs still have the power to make you feel the most alive you've felt in weeks.
Artist: The Mint Chicks
Album: F**k The Golden Youth!
Label: Warner Music
Verdict: Even more potent 10 years on
- TimeOut