Simple to be disparaging it may be but do we really need Ms Lewis getting her kicks with The Licks on gilt-edged highways in an attempt to slum it at street level? Well, no, not at all, of course. For all her grabbing of the mantle for disaffected public schoolgirls now that Courtney Love’s really lost it and Shirley Manson’s ran out of pages of her ‘How To Be Curve’ manual Lewis never really had to struggle with her band, who are, incidentally, very appropriately named not for any sexually feral way but for their rifling through the pages of the bumper book of punk rock cliches for cretins. For all she can pack a tune with energy and tries to create some edgy sense of charisma it’s all too much a product of the product - despite her playing some divergent roles on film this still smacks of a Hollywood gloss stained vanity vehicle to live out some dream of the stage that she can strut away from at any time. Not unlike a scenario where she heard a Texas Terri album and wanted to have a crack herself but ends up as a sub-Strokes version full of safe cat-walk friendly Rawk’n’Roll.

Oh songs? Yeah I bet that’s the party line. “The songs are out there to stand alone.” Well, they sure do. Admit it, you believed me there for a second didn’t you? ‘Smash And Grab’ is the best of the bunch, as it sounds like ‘Prime Mover’, ‘Get Up’ is a rudimentary attempt at The Stones meets AC/DC and ends up as Aerosmith’s 80’s A’n’R dude writing with Desmond Child. Jon Bon Jovi would jiggle like Mick Jagger having a rabies shot. The rest is asinine adolescent attempt at Rock’n’Roll that would be perfect on a cheap 80’s movie. The girl can protest all she likes but without her name this wouldn’t get out of the toilets.
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- Stu Gibson