Atom Bomb Baby

• Artist: Scientists
• Rating:
• Release Date: 1985
• Genre: Rock

Review

You know you're in for a bumpy ride when these are the first lyrics you hear: "Sometimes I feel like Travis Bickle/Just want to sh*t up all the bad that's lurking in this town" (from "Travis," after the anti-hero in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver). Now ensconced in London, the Aussie émigrés would record this live EP (titled You Get What You Deserve in the U.K.) in 1984. The title track was also released as a single the following year (with "Backwards Man" as a B-side). Kim Salmon's interest in American proto-punk like the Stooges and Suicide permeates the material, particularly the pounding "Leadfoot" and "Atom Bomb Baby." As a vocalist, he sounds just as menacing as Alan Vega or Iggy Pop at their most agitated (appropriately enough, Scientists would tour with Vega around this time). Unlike the early work of those groups, however, there isn't anything here as rambling as "We Will Fall" (the Stooges) or the (almost-unbearably) frightening "Frankie Teardrop" (Suicide), both tracks clocking in at ten-plus minutes. Scientists dance around the edge of the abyss -- but they don't quite fall into it. The dark but seductive mood is lightened a bit by "It Came out of the Sky," the sonic equivalent of a grade-B sci-fi short from the '50s ("Well, it came out of the sky/Landed just a little south of Moline/Jody fell out of his tractor/Couldn't believe what he'd seen") and the twangy Dick Dale guitar riding along the top of "Hell Beach"'s droning rhythm. ~ Kathleen C. Fennessy, Rovi

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