Any Trouble - Where Are All The Nice Girls? (1980)

I first heard this New Wave power pop/pub-rock group on the Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Hits of the '80s, Vol. 6 CD where I oddly compared them to Marshall Crenshaw even though the more obvious comparison is to Stiff lable-mate Elvis Costello (hell, let's throw some Nick Lowe and Joe Jackson in the mix while we're dropping names). I was treated to a few more tracks from the band on the wonderful Big Stiff Box Set so I jumped on this CD when I recently saw in the used clearance bin for $1.99 (I can only guess the previous owner unloaded it when they purchased Cherry Red Records' The Complete Stiff Recordings 1980-1981 box set).

Musician, March 1981, p. 88

Smash Hits rated it an 8 out of 10, Robert Christgau gave it a C+, Cash Box called the band's sound "hard to resist," while Billboard stated that the album "might be Stiff's most commercial offering to AOR radio to date." The Virgin Encyclopedia of Eighties Music gave the album 3 out of 5 stars while the cover story of the July 12, 1980 edition of Melody Maker labelled the band "the most exciting rock 'n' roll group the MM has seen since The Pretenders" and this LP "the best Stiff album since Elvis Costello's My Aim Is True."

So that's your critic wrap-up from 1980. Me? I dig the thing and am putting it in my truck's CD player for the foreseeable future, so if you're a co-worker and want to go grab lunch soon, you've been warned.

Peak on the US Billboard Top 200 chart: Did not chart

Tracks: So many hooks - gimme gimme! My faves are Yesterday's Love, Second Choice, The Hurt, Girls Are Always Right, and (Get You Off) The Hook. Like most albums, there's some filler tracks but they're not skippable, they simply pale in comparison to the others. The band covers Bruce Springsteen's tune Growing Up, and while the lyrics of adolescent angst fit in with the other tracks, the music does not.

At the end of the CD, tacked onto the end of track 13, they've included radio promos for WXRT Chicago and Q104 (WQBK-FM) Albany. Could have done without those, but whatevs.

Personal Memory Associated with this CD: None, although I sure wish I had known of the group in my high school days in the early '80s. We fell in love with The Knack the previous summer and it would have been a short jump from Get The Knack to Where Are All The Nice Girls.