Emerging more than a year after Fay Fife and Eugene
Reynolds broke a nation's heart by dismantling the Rezillos, the Revillos' Rev
Up debut set the stage, immediately, for a mission that was going to take the
last band's sound into an entirely new universe; one that had, sad to say,
already been visited by the B-52's' and the Cramps' recent doings, but which
was nevertheless ripe for serious exploration. A dramatic hybrid of day-glow
rockabilly, B-movie glitter, and post-punk trash, Rev Up is a howling good
time, a blur of wacked intentions and wired energies that settle for a moment
on one, two, a dozen classic boogies, but never hang around for long, because
there's always another planet to build a drive-in on. And so, "Secret of
the Shadow" blurs into the title track; "The Rock-A-Boom" leaks
into "Voodoo"; and the semi-classic single "Motorbike Beat"
incinerates everything in sight.
