Holiday In The Sun
‘Peruvian Vacation’ was The Stupids debut album, following on in fine style from the impressive ‘Violent Nun’ single and further cementing their reputation at the time as being at the forefront of the burgeoning UK skate punk scene.
This is a raucous, rough and ready slab of turbo charged punk rock that threatens to rip holes in your speakers! The guitars are much louder than we’d heard from them before and the accelerator had been firmly applied with the fourteen tracks coming it at not far over the twenty minute mark. Despite speeding everything up they somehow managed to throw in more melodic vocals, particularly on tracks like ’I Scream Inside’ and ‘Always Never Fun’, making this accessible at the same time as being jaw droppingly intense.
Not surprisingly The Stupids always had a reputation for being a fun band and there’s plenty of evidence of it on ‘Peruvian Vacation’, not least in the amusing groove of the title track and the Springsteen pastiche ‘Born to Built to Grind‘. The only real criticism you could make here is that the vocals aren’t too clear, which often means the lyrics are difficult to pick out. Overall though this is just over twenty minutes of classic skate punk that still sounds great.
As with all the re-releases in this series there is a host of bonus tracks, this time including an unreleased nine song session and three tracks from the side project ‘The Coolest Retards’.