Velvet Star ‘dirty girl’ (velvet star). Alas not officially out for a month or so though by rights it should be causing all amount of bother and consternation through heavy rotation radio play and if not we want to know why. A quick spot of speed reading of their press release tells us that Velvet Star are a quintet hailing from Yorkshire and that in certain quarters of the rock establishment are something of a hotly tipped thing. Well of course it would say that wouldn’t it. Then again they do have a point because ’dirty girl’ as the title may have you suspecting is a sassy n’ sleazy n’ sneering bitch of a record which asides anything else wears its New York Dolls hearts on its sleeve, a prime slice of preening and pouting three chord bad boogie, deliciously decadent and veering ever so slightly to the more accepted end of the glam spectrum, this hip shaking babe sounds like a kiss off between the Black Halos, plastic toys and Gold Cash Gold levelled with riffage hoodwinked from the arse pockets of Aerosmith as it struts like a bad ’un. Flip the disc for the equally scowling ‘give in to me’ - this time darker and more heavy bearing in texture and smarting with the kind of hairy adrenalin rush and impenetrably compressed wall of sound that harks back to a late 80’s era Cult while found rounding up the set ‘rockstar // superstar’ is bedevilled by flotillas of locked grooved serrated riffs and nailed with the kind of wasted and out of it bliss swept pop drive that for some strange reason had us naggingly reminded of Jesus Jones - seriously don’t even bother asking why - just does. www.myspace.com/velvetstarband

Missive 227....

http://www.myspace.com/velvetstarband - this lot featured fairly recently in these very pages when we fell backside over bosom in much adoration of their current single ’dirty girl’ - see missive 221. Hailing from Yorkshire these decadent dandies know a thing or three about humping riffs and lip curled sneer struts given they concoct a kind of super charged over sexed Aerosmith grind that’s curdled and shot through with the sleek and sleazy purr of a New York Dolls / Heartbreakers obsessed Black Halos. Both the lead cut and the flip (’rockstar superstar’) of their current outing feature on their my space player while elsewhere we suggest you check out both the seizure stricken punk metal slabs ’welcome to my disease’ and ’jazz mag’ culled from their ’ladies and ho’s’ EP from a few years back the latter in particular riddled by an insanely and insidiously snaked blues grind pilfered straight from the arse pocket of Tom Petty while ’something about you’ released earlier this year (and I’m certain featured here to much praise) is an adrenalin kissed turntable trashing slice of frenetic uber cool scowl.