The Photos - Crystal Tips And Mighty Mice

British band the Photos stayed together only long enough to release one--self-titled--album in 1980. The follow-up, the curiously titled Crystal Tips And Mighty Mice, lingered in the vaults until its eventual exhumation in 2008. Like its predecessor this almost mythical record shows a punchy band mixing punk energy with power-pop hooks and new-wave production touches, with dynamic lead singer Wendy Wu simultaneously channelling Debbie Harry and Patti Smith, while still retaining her own style. Produced by the legendary Tony Visconti and, by their own accord in the liner notes of the CD, a major step of musical growth from their 1st LP, this, their 2nd studio album does in fact show that the band was evolving. The songs are more diverse, yet, at the same time, they seem to be getting more comfortable with just playing these new tunes for what they are.

Both opener My Life Story and the one song that was actually released from the collection way back when - Life in a Day, as a 7" single - are punchy numbers sung from the perspective of disenchanted souls plodding through everyday society. Luke Come Back is a catchy plea that sounds sort of like ABBA on steroids, while Kill That Girl is a dismal tale of deadly jealousy set to a bouncy tune. Quite possibly the star of the record is the stunning For Beauty's Sake, which features a truly dreamy melody and thoughtful lyrics.

Thanks to Cherry Red Records, the album has been issued on CD with bonus tracks that definitely sound more poppy than the first eleven songs which sometimes call to mind the Passions, another great female-led band of the time that has been almost entirely forgotten. For over 25 years Crystal Tips remained in the vaults, only to be heard by a select few new wave fanatics who managed to track down mp3s ripped from a promo copy of the record. That all changed in July 2008 when Cherry Red Records secured the rights to the album and released it for the first time.

Photogenic

The Photos were a young punk band from Evesham, Worcestershire, originally called Satan's Rats featuring Steve Eagles on guitar, Dave Sparrow on bass, and Olly Harrison on drums, but when they recruited a good-looking female vocalist going by the name of Wendy Wu in 1979, they changed their name to the media-friendly Photos and recorded and released an album of new wave pop that unfortunately, despite the band's denial, sounded almost identical to the music of Blondie from the era of their first two albums, Blondie and Plastic Letters. Prior to the debut album, a four-track EP was released featuring the tracks "Irene," which was later to become the band's only hit single, albeit peaking at a miserable number 56, and "Barbarellas," about the closing of a local nightclub. The original vinyl and cassette album was just 12 tracks, but when finally transferred to CD in the late '90s, they added an additional 8 tracks from the Blackmail Tapes sessions that were never originally released and then later still Cherry Red added 3 tracks from Satan’s Rats debut single. The Photos included the singles "Irene" and "Do You Have Fun," which they were due to perform on Top of the Pops before an industrial dispute took the show off the air. Most of the tracks were bouncy new wave pop, although the pace slowed down on the track "Friends," which, unusually, was over four minutes long, and they attempt a reggae beat similar to many Police tracks on "Loss of Contact" and "She's Artistic." The album ended with the soulful Dusty Springfield classic "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself." The album hit number four in 1980, and for a brief while, Wu's face was regularly in the music press, but Blondie had already moved on, away from the new wave scene, having conquered the world with Parallel Lines, while the Photos' second album, Crystal Tips and Mighty Mice, was recorded but never released at the time. Incidentally, this Wendy Wu had absolutely nothing to do with the actress Brenda Song playing a character of the same name in the Disney TV movie Homecoming Warrior.