CD REVIEW: SUGAR LOUISE – Friends In Love Places

Shane | 21 March 2014 | Reply

CD REVIEW: SUGAR LOUISE – Friends In Love Places
Naked Hollywood Records
3 March 2014
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
8/10

Sugar Louise’s sophomore album has, in their own words, “more depth and substance than their happy-go-lucky 2011 debut,” and you’d be a harsh person to not allow them to feel a little darker after the tragic accidental death of their bandmate and friend Øystein Døsvik in 2012.

Thankfully Friends In Love Places is far from jaded. Their punk pop exuberance still firmly in place, and this is another thoroughly enjoyable high-energy romp through summertime parties, New York bar crawls and visits to the local Pair-A-Dice burger n’ beer joint, whilst also dealing with having to face full-on the reality of growing up a little.

Where their Everything’s Better With Sugar debut was sending Letters From Hollywood, Friends…’ latest single (a recent feature on 100% ROCK MAGAZINE) Hollywood Dreams deals with having to get a real job, and as the band’s partners in the song sing ‘Baby, you know that I love you, but you just can’t keep on living in this Hollywood Dream’, we can all empathise, ‘cos we’ve all been there.

Last year’s single On The Radio is a follow on from their debut’s U2 Suck – and it’s a bouncy, sugar-coated bliss bomb of a tune calling out the crap all over the radio. 1994 sees singer/guitarist Billy McBarbie looking back a decade to when things were simpler, and like the rest of the album, it’s an instantly memorable, rifftastic slab of powerful punky pop.

The BPM is turned down a touch for HBO, giving the powerhouse rhythm section of Twiggy Royale and Eddie D’Lizard a breather, then, where on album #1 McBarbie was dreaming of dating Keira Knightly, this time round he’s bemoaning his ex’s new fling on The New Guy.

Fittingly, Friends… finishes with two very real, very important songs for the band. One For All shows they are closer than ever and have each other’s backs, while You Call It Love shows they’re cool with getting a little older and not needing to misbehave every night. It sums up where McBarbie, Royale, D’Lizard and guitarist Terry Legal are right now, and where they’re heading: just about old enough to know better, young enough to keep on doing it when they choose, and celebrating all their friends in different love places.

https://www.facebook.com/sugarlouiseband