Hands Off Gretel - 'I Want The World' Album Review

Tracklist:

1. Kiss Me Girl

2. S.A.S.S

3. Big Boy

4. It's My Fault

5. I Want The World

6. Blame Myself

7. Alien

8. Freaks Like Us

9. Milk

10. Fingers

11. My Friend Said

12. Rot (All The Good Things)

Opening track 'Kiss Me Girl' is what Katie Perry’s I kissed a girl could have been if she had more talent, sass and attitude. It’s a brilliant statement of intent to start this album with, its got attitude in buckets, fantastic playing and brilliant lyrics.

'S.A.S.S' keeps up the attitude, quality and sheer joy of this album, if you listen to Hands Off Gretel and don’t find parts of your body moving in response check your pulse, you may be dead.

Three songs in with 'Big Boy' it becomes obvious this band have a lot of talent. There are some rough edges that will improve with time but, as a package, this is an excellent album, there is melody in spades.

Then the fourth song arrives, 'It My Fault', and you start to realise this band have no end their ambition, this is a tremendous song with a slightly different feel to it, it’s a bit poppier but on the hard edges of Pop, P!nk would love to have this in her back catalogue.

I’m not going to discuss any more of the songs as you really need to go investigate and discover this band for yourself except to say there are some songs in here that should be amongst the biggest hits of the year.

If you’re still not convinced I would describe this album as Hole meets Elastica, meets the Clash, meets the Jesus and Marychain, meets Green Day, meets the best parts of Hazel O’Connor’s 'Breaking Glass' and P!nk’s harder edged songs and you might start to get it. But what you should really do is not think about it at all, you’re wasting time, listen instead! You will never regret it!

I’m going to call it, this is my album of the year so far (which given some of the great music I’ve reviewed in 2019 already is the highest praise I can give it). This is the kind of album that I got into reviewing for, to hear music like this that just makes me happy that someone exists who can make it.