The Vaselines - Sex With an X

(Sub Pop)

Twenty years after they first split, Glasgow indie capos Eugene Kelly and Frances McKee have made a very good album which doesn’t sully the memory of what went before. How many reformed groups can say that?

Playing once more on their unschooled but lovely voices and a taste for rough-edged guitars and dry lyricism, Sex With an X celebrates rebound sex on the title track and castigates religion on ‘My God’s Bigger Than Your God’. ‘I Hate the 80s’ sentiment is in the right place (‘… cos the 80s were shit!’), but it doesn’t have the same musical scope as Kelly’s brooding ‘The Devil Inside Me’ or McKee’s sparse ‘Whitechapel’, demonstrating how The Vaselines now have the range to back up their attitude.