{"id":3249,"date":"2017-01-17T14:40:24","date_gmt":"2017-01-17T14:40:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alreadyheard.com\/staging\/review-wstr-red-green-or-inbetween\/"},"modified":"2018-08-28T20:31:30","modified_gmt":"2018-08-28T19:31:30","slug":"review-wstr-red-green-or-inbetween","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alreadyheard.com\/staging\/review-wstr-red-green-or-inbetween\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: WSTR &#8211; Red, Green or Inbetween"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"tmblr-full\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/78.media.tumblr.com\/271c64c05f1b70691e196f2a5da333e5\/tumblr_oifllsENnG1r8no6so4_1280.jpg\" width=\"250em\" alt=\"\" title=\"\"><\/figure>\n<p>Punk rock is to pop-punk what cocaine is to Coca-Cola &#8211; a defunct, bewildering reminder of all-but-forgotten origins that survive only in the name, and only to those ageing few who remember. Punk was a cultural behemoth that ignited the imagination of a generation. Pop-punk has Tuesday club nights, pizza tattoos and spotty twenty-somethings writing about Californian sunsets in their childhood bedroom in Wrexham.<\/p>\n<p>But here\u2019s the thing &#8211; pop-punk is huge again. And Liverpool\u2019s <b>WSTR<\/b> will be huge one day. Their momentum since forming less than two years ago has been remarkable, and the online hype surrounding debut full-length album <i>\u2018Red, Green or Inbetween\u2019<\/i> is massive &#8211; its announcement was accompanied by the anthemic single <i>\u2018Lonely Smiles\u2019<\/i>, which received an overwhelmingly positive reaction.<\/p>\n<p><!-- more --><\/p>\n<p><i>\u201cWe\u2019re fucking great at being basic\u201d<\/i> claims Sammy Clifford in his faux-American accent on opener <i>\u2018Featherweight\u2019<\/i>, and he\u2019s not wrong. They have the formula down to a tee &#8211; the fizzing riffs of <i>\u2018Footprints\u2019<\/i> and <i>\u2018Nail The Casket (Thanks For Nothing)\u2019<\/i> come alive through suitably punchy rhythms and guitars compressed to the point of combustion.<\/p>\n<p>Tracks which are considerably more pop than punk such as <i>\u2018Eastbound &amp; Down\u2019<\/i>, pack less of a punch yet retain a remarkable knack for a sugar-sweet melody. And, even though Clifford\u2019s vocal is unwaveringly whiny, it somehow never grates. His unvaried delivery disguises moments of true anguish amongst tales of partying excess &#8211; <i>\u2018Lonely Smiles\u2019<\/i> is in truth desperately bleak, while <i>\u201cI\u2019m bleeding out, and I can\u2019t feel my face\u201d<\/i> suggests hurt that goes far deeper than any break-up on <i>\u2018The Last Ride\u2019<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><i>\u2018Red, Green, or Inbetween\u2019<\/i> is eleven tracks of breathless and unrelenting energy, epitomised in <i>\u2019Gobshite\u2019<\/i>\u2019s thirty-eight seconds. It\u2019s not new, but pop-punk never was. It has always harked back to better days and misremembered youth, invoking the spirit of bands that haven\u2019t been cool for at least a decade. As a uniquely divisive subgenre, it is reviled by hipsters to metalheads &#8211; yet it inspires and gives hope to many in only the way music can. And that is pretty punk rock.<\/p>\n<p>4.5\/5<\/p>\n<p><i>\u2018Red, Green or Inbetween\u2019<\/i> by <b>WSTR<\/b> is released on January 20th on <b>No Sleep Records.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>WSTR<\/b> links: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/wstrband\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Facebook<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wstrband\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Twitter<\/a> | <a href=\"https:\/\/wstr.bandcamp.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Bandcamp<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Words by Peter Stewart (<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/PeteStew_\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">@PeteStew_<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Punk rock is to pop-punk what cocaine is to Coca-Cola &#8211; a defunct, bewildering reminder of all-but-forgotten origins that survive only in the name, and only to those ageing few who remember. Punk was a cultural behemoth that ignited the imagination of a generation. Pop-punk has Tuesday club nights, pizza tattoos and spotty twenty-somethings writing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":16045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[1610,15030,2369,1111],"class_list":["post-3249","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-album-reviews","tag-no-sleep-records","tag-peter-stewart","tag-red-green-or-inbetween","tag-wstr"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Review: WSTR - Red, Green or Inbetween - Already Heard Staging<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Punk rock is to pop-punk what cocaine is to Coca-Cola - a defunct, bewildering reminder of all-but-forgotten origins that survive only in the name, and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Review: WSTR - 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