Album Review: Fly

Strutting out of Oakland, California with a brimful of attitude and summoning the eternally indecent and time-tested formula of scratchy guitar, subterranean drums, bruising bass and sneering vocals are The Time Flys. Their debut Fly is a juvenile, reckless and very nearly perfect record.

With twelve brutal and jumpy tracks, many of them less than two minutes in length, Fly immediately recalls the sound of the New York Dolls, The Gizmos, The Stooges and The Penetrators. In fact, it’s so deeply reminiscent of late 1970’s punk that you would be forgiven for mistaking it for a lost nugget from the pre-punk Midwest/New York landscape.

Sir Eric “The Masher” Von Ravenson, Andy Freeze, Erin Error and Peter P Juvenile have crafted an album with a ramshackle and almost sloppy feel which, when compared to most of today’s over-produced rock offerings, is highly invigorating.

Each feral two-minute punk blast bombards the senses, but Jailbait, Teenage Years and Anti-Depressants are especially abrasive, taking in, as they do, underage sex, alcoholism and drug abuse. For those still in any doubt, the band lay out their manifesto on Time Flys Theme, “We're the Time Flys and we don't care / You don't like us cuz we got long hair / We play Rock and Roll, we got no time / It's OK as long as it rhymes.”

The obvious 1970s punk comparisons and obscure doo-wop cover, Teenage Tears, suggest that The Time Flys are rooted firmly in the past, but there’s enough lyrical weirdness and explosive noise to suggest that they’ve got at least one eye on the future.