Bad Nerves - Bad Nerves

Label: Killing Moon

Released: 20th November 2020

Rating: ★★★

Bad Nerves’ frantic debut album plays host to all your adolescent anxiety, thrashed out as punchy, fast-paced garage punk. A desperation to do something, and be something, runs throughout, the racing guitar demanding you keep up.

From the opening track ‘Can’t Be Mine’, the band’s roaring energy explodes out, sure-fire proof that their warped, crazed exuberance is a force to be reckoned with. Single ‘ELECTRIC 88’ fires forth with all the petulant fury that life insists is put away once you’ve left school; this is music that makes your skin itch with the need to dance. It's followed by ‘Wasted Days’, a burning lament that somehow makes you smile.

The whole album is packed full of this defiant longing, a sadness that absolutely refuses to be sad. It is instead a rage of teenage angst, furious pop that crawls under your skin. Lead singer Bobby Nerves bombards you with all the complex, contradictory sentiments of confused hearts throughout the album, wailing “I want you around” in ‘New Shapes’, a fireball of a song standing at just one minute forty-five, but insisting “I don’t know you” in ‘Bored Of Babies’. The songs hook you in with the universality of their simplistic lyrics, layered over furious guitars and pounding drums.