Chemicrazy

Conventional wisdom would suggest that That Petrol Emotion peaked with their first two albums of cutthroat, frenetic garage pop, and that subsequent albums made too many concessions to pop currents and lost their charm. Piffle. Chemicrazy is the supreme statement by a band who could have gone on churning out excellent garage-rock songs from here till eternity, but chose not to. The results on End of the Millennium Psychosis Blues were patchy, but not here — especially on two of the finest singles never to grace the British charts: "Sensitize" and "Hey Venus." Vocalist Steve Mack's performance on the former, in particular, is stunning; and the rest of the album is almost as good. If you have any sort of appetite for pop music, you'd have to be dead from the neck up not to dance your legs off to this.