"Pump Up The Volume" is nowhere near as rock as the title suggests. It's a narration of stopping in the middle of things to 'turn up the pop song'. Suddenly they sound like The Strokes. Actually narration is a frequently used device here. "St. Pauli" drops a reference to German 7" record. Actually, that probably explains this band's popularity with rock critics I figure - they probably get lots of German 7" records and get the joke. I don't and I don't care. "Late Sunday Evening" is a bit of a play on 60's light pop with a trumpet solo. My mild favorites are the last two; "Nag Nag Nag Nag" a bit of introspection about changing priorities after being a teenager. And "Jealous Guy", where the narrator knows he is having sex just for the sake of it, rather than actually wanting to - first time I've heard that in a pop song. But overall this record seems to have lost some of the momentum they had; now I have to go back and listen to the debut to check if it was there to begin with.
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