Cute Lepers: Adventure Time

Cute Lepers are juvenile and ridiculous. From singer Steve E Nix’s caricature fake-British accent to choruses that reek of sloganized, teenage rebellion, like “Give me noise give me loud things!” and “’77 teenage heaven”, the band just exudes an air of stylistically vintage snootiness. Somehow, though, it isn’t annoying and the group rocks because of that attitude.

Sonically, Cute Lepers amount to two parts Stiff Little Fingers and one part the Shangri Las. That’s to say members play fast and tight, rally around three barre-chords and accentuate their choruses with ooh’s and aah’s. Most of Adventure Time sounds like a scooter ride though London in the late 1970s. It’s throwback punk that imagines the ’80s American scene never happened and instead revels in more rock and roll, less hardcore, aspects of the genre. While “Foxy Society” and “All This Attention is Killing Me” are loud, fast and perfectly punk, tracks like “Head over Heels” and “She Liked Helter Skelter” sway farther toward the oldies-rock sound that the backup vocals evoke, and it’s there Adventure Time hits gold.