Here’s where we get to invoke the old chestnut about the two bulls standing on a hill overlooking a field of cows: “Let’s run down there and fuck one o’ them cows,” says the younger bull. “No,” says the older one. “Let’s walk down there and fuck ’em all.”
The Undertones Mk II still know how to get their rocks off but they’ve also mastered the vagaries of stamina and subtlety – the minor chords and the mid-tempo – required to sustain an album. Singer Paul McLoone has the vocal quiver needed to reproduce the Sharkey back catalogue live, but he also possesses the snotty insouciance of a whip-skinny Sonics or Count Five hipster, with just a pinch of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ sociopathic slapstick thrown in for good measure.
Get What You Need is an above par scuzz rock collection. Remove the label and you’d have them pegged for a combo in their mid-20s influenced by The Undertones, but also The Ramones, a whole slew of British invasion garage r ‘n’ b acts, and even Brian Wilson. Get What You Need is 13 tunes slam-dunked in thirty-something minutes, and while it does not find new ways of squaring the circle, I’ll bet it sounds like just the thing from the back of an oversold bar.
The Best Of material scarcely needs much reappraisal. While The Pistols and The Clash were slashing the canvas with broad strokes, The Undertones, like The Buzzcocks, were dealing in after-school dramas, kitchen sink comedies and the sort of minutiae that only ever makes it into pop songs via English eccentrics like Ray Davies and Jarvis Cocker. No reformed band wants to compete with their own Greatest Hits, but these albums should be considered entirely separate entities. Consider either one a kick up the Derry air.