Destroyed by the look of love - losingtoday.com

The Scratch ‘destroyed by the look of love’ (pony land). Damn (ed), damn (ed), damn (ed) we’re so mightily pissed at ourselves because somehow we’ve managed to inadvertently mislay this babe much to our embarrassment and save it from a fate worse than - well in our gaff - death - that being the unheard mountain of CD’s currently hiding the floors of two rooms and several work surfaces. The Scratch should need no introductions in these pages, pardoning the French but they literally piss melodies so razor sharp, acutely addictive and drilled in threads of a vintage golden era new wave flavour that we here suspect them of having access to a time travelling device. Sadly we only have a one track promo of this their three track download only release - the gone missing in action cuts being ‘flicker’ and a live demo take of ‘not your friend’ (which we will enquire about in a begging letter and report back with haste in future despatches). Mind you we’ll forgive them just this once because the lead out cut ‘destroyed by the look of love’ is frankly worth the entrance fee on its own. This babe is primed and charged with the kind of wickedly audacious exuberance not heard around these parts since Supergrass started re-branding old Buzzcocks ditties as they’re own. And talking of the Buzzcocks the Shelley / Diggle et al reference markers aren’t lost on us here because ‘destroyed by the look of love’ has a definite ‘love bites’ edge to it albeit subtly smoked in the irrefutable shade adorned soft psyche hue of 60’s fuzz shakers the Shadows of Knight while cut pristinely with one of the most drop dead chorus’ this side of a garage beat pop styled Sundazed re-issue. Between you and me I think the blighters are toying with us.