The second album by
the Ends is the sound of a bunch of kids from Austin who would give anything to be, if not
the Buzzcocks, then a very similar second- or third-string U.K. punk-pop band from the late '70s who regularly got compared to
the Buzzcocks. Singer Ian End has one of the most blatantly fake U.K. accents in the history of American punk, in fact. For all of the blatant revivalism, however,
Concrete Disappointment isn't at all bad at creating a sort of Platonic Ideal of '70s Brit-punk, taking elements of
the Buzzcocks,
Clash,
Undertones, and many lesser lights and converting them into simple but effective 2:30 blasts of fuzzed-up guitars, sloppy machine-gun drumming, and those yowling, snotty vocals. It's nothing that dozens of other bands -- many of them also on the retro-obsessed Dirtnap label -- haven't already done, but
the Ends pull it off more often than not, particularly on the trashy,
New York Dolls-ish opener, "Pucker Up." ~ Stewart Mason