Tuts - Update Your Brain

There once was a happy time - as those of us sadly old enough to remember early 80s punk and new wave can attest - when good pop songs were refreshingly simple. They popped up, banged entertainingly about for a couple of minutes and then buggered off with a minimum of fuss having lodged themselves irretrievably in your eardrums.
Update Your Brain, the debut album from all-female West London trio The Tuts is reminiscent of this admirable and much-missed approach to the noble art of music-making. A rip-roaringly rambunctious collection of songs which combine infectious tunes with a spiky lyrical aggression, this is what pop music ought to be about.
The Tuts' sound is built around the powerful, direct guitar of diminutive duo Nadia Javed and Harriet Doveton, and the enjoyably no-nonsense, attacking drumming hammered out by Beverley Ishmael. Topping this off are Nadia's vocals which veer swiftly and unpredictably from a pop-princess saccharine sweetness to an in-your-face ferocity that bodes ill for any Tory politician, self-satisfied record company executive or below-par boyfriend who has the misfortune to cross her.
The album kicks off with the band's new single, Let Go Of The Past, a song which lures you in with a deceptively melodic set-up before punching you in the teeth with a thumping hook - a style the band employ to great effect in many of their songs.
The Tuts don't so much wear their sentiments on their sleeve as parade them in giant day-glo letters all over their T-shirts. An unashamed and fiery politics - of both the personal and parliamentary variety - is stamped through their songs. The hollering anti-sexist anthems Tut Tut Tut and Dump Your Boyfriend are calls to action on how to deal with male misconduct; the plaintive, poppy Give Us Something Worth Voting For needs little if any explanation.
This band is very far from being a one-trick pony, however - tracks like Con Man and 1982 (a disparaging and merciless criticism of a former and short-lived collaboration with a manager who tried to alter the band's style) display a more sophisticated style, both lyrically and musically; while the delicious I Call You Up is a little slice of pure pop heaven, so catchy it's practically contagious.

Making musical comparisons is a particularly odious practice for reviewers to indulge in, but if you're looking for a guide to what you might get from the Tuts, I'd suggest a cross between the freshness of early Undertones, the combativeness of X-Ray Spex, and the poppy power of one-time indie heroes the Primitives. I am painfully aware that the majority of the Tuts' fanbase are far too young to know who any of the bands I'm referencing are.
Rightly so, too. The Tuts make music that's about being young - passionate and direct, opinionated and uncompromised. Hopefully, they'll forgive the approval of those of us in the older age brackets who are still partial to the odd three-minute thrash of banging guitars, thumping percussion and choruses that make you want to shout them out at the top of your voice.
By the way, they're great live too..