Manda and the Marbles
Angels With Dirty Faces (Sickhouse)
by Marc Hirsh

originally published in Amplifier, March-April 2005

Angels With Dirty Faces starts with the minute-and-a-half-long mantra, “The kids just wanna dance,” and if that’s true, they’ve picked the right record. If the kids wanna sing or hum or even remember it a half hour later, though, they might wanna look elsewhere. Drawing heavily from the Motels and “X Offender”-era Blondie, Manda and the Marbles have the sound mostly down, though a number of songs have the keyboard so far down in the mix that you want to knock on its door and ask its parents if it can come out to play. Manda’s vocals provide a little more Gwen Stefani than I’d normally look for in my New Wave move, but it also shows that Stefani’s annoyingness comes primarily from her having picked the wrong damn genre for her voice. Unfortunately, Angels could use some stronger hooks, if not songs: “Boys Will Be Boys” and “Ode To Rock” are as catchy as they need to be, but too many others don’t spark the way they should (the covers of the Fast Cars’ “The Kids Just Wanna Dance” and the Avengers’ “Cheap Tragedies” are swell, though). Angels is like the audio equivalent of a party at which you know you had a great time but that you can’t recall the next day.

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