Teenage kicks were the order of the day on the Northern rockers’ scintillating debut. Barely out of school themselves, Tim Wheeler, Mark Hamilton and Rick McMurray set about creating a heady, wildly energetic punk-rock collection that caught the first surge of adolescent romance in all its giddy glory.
‘Goldfinger’ was perhaps the highlight of the lot; a gorgeously melodic mid-tempo anthem with an almost novelistic lyric (“I’ve got some records on, got some bottles of wine…the rain is lashing down and I’m waiting for her”) that summed up the ennui of a small-town upbringing as well as any rock single of the decade.
Elsewhere, the corrosive riffing and bubblegum lyric of ‘Girl From Mars’ was sheer mosh-pit nirvana, the spiky ‘Kung Fu’ recalled The Ramones at their most frenetic, and ‘Oh Yeah’ was such a trembling panegyric to teenage lust it could conceivably have soundtracked The Virgin Suicides. To cap it all, 1977 went straight to No. 1 in the UK and spawned four hit singles. By the time the group came to record the follow-up, Nu-clear Sounds, they were still only 20. Bastards.