Radio Days

Radio Days (2005)

Rich Cocksedge

Italy's Radio Days have long been peddling their power-pop-laced punk with comparisons to bands such as Screeching Weasel, the Vapors and the Knack following in their wake. It's hard to deny any of those descriptions, as they all seem to come through at various stages of this album but without really attaining the heights of those three bands. Their self-titled album came out in the middle of the last decade and six years on still has its merits today. With a cover that brings to mind the Ramones Too Tough To Die, albeit lit up and a lot more colourful, you get an idea of where some of Radio Days' main influences may be found, although they've channeled it through a Screeching Weasel filter with Dario Persi sounding a bit like the recently disgraced frontman of the aforementioned band.

Radio Days are at their best when they are ripping through the more up-tempo songs here including "Carlito's Way", "I Wanna Come Over" (this really does have a Weasel feel to it) and "Rainy Days". When they slow things down a bit, the album tends to lose valuable momentum and it needs something with a bit of oomph (not really a technical term, but you get my drift) to kick-start it back to life. That's not to say that they're not able to drop things down a notch or two but they do seem to excel when the songs have a bit more pace.

Nothing here comes across as new or innovative, but I'm sure most of us acknowledge there are few bands for which those words could apply these days. However, Radio Days have nailed down their sound quite nicely: There are hooks aplenty, strong guitars and a driving rhythm section that all go to provide a pretty good listening experience if you like peppy, poppy punk.

Occasionally the vocals seem a bit off key, and not quite fitting in with music (maybe this is due to the songs being sung in English as opposed to their native Italian) but this is one of two minor gripes on my behalf. The other is that I find myself getting a bit distracted towards the last few tracks here and switching off–I have always thought that 10 tracks is the optimum number of songs on a pop-punk release as it serves to provide an element of quality control. Overall, though, not a bad effort that sounds good half a decade or so on from its release.