LP Review

Originally Published 27th March 1982 NME

THE WAITRESSES we already know, thanks to a neat little Ze single last year,'I Know What Boys Like'. That, if you remember it, was new wave New York (Akron, actually) pop-craft at its cleverest, where the girl delivered some killer lyrics in a knowing drawl, over the engagingly clumsy shuffle which marks the group's sound. And then there was their gift to the Ze Xmas album, another winning cut entitled 'Christmas Wrapping'. The evidence of this debut LP suggests that neither song was a fluke.

'Wasn't Tomorrow Wonderful?' (which happily includes'What Boys Like') is, in short, consistently impressive, and some of the best fun I've had at 33rpm so far this year. Patty Donahue plays the female lead, the girl with a deadpan, brattish sophistication-an ideal medium for the group's guitarist/songwriter Chris Butler. Butler, it has to be stressed, writes sharper, funnier, sadder, better lyrics than almost anybody else around, and I'd buy him a drink anytime.

Without ignoring or devaluing The Waitresses' music-which is hook-full, hard, slinky and persuasive- the temptation is to quote those lyrics ad infinitum. The angle of boy-writing-via-girl is intriguing, carried off with a wealth of insight and stuffed with two-line gems: whole relationships get encapsulated with wit and skill. Girl-loses-boy: "Why do I always pick the ones who are · bad for me . . . I smelled money/It was by the television when I woke up" ('Go On'). Girl-dumps-boy: "I got the cab calls out of my hi-fi/I learned a lot since you've been gone"('No Guilt').

"Bigger" themes, too; are handled well; with an eye for tiny detail and a novelists scope. Try impressing your friends with throwaways like "My goals are to find a cure for irony and to make a fool out of God"('Jimmy Tomorrow'). And so on, and so on.

Obliged to find fault, I might mention that the four male Waitresses (including Billy Ficca, ex Television drummer) have that trouser, tie and haircut problem common to US new wave acts, but this is admittedly not serious. Being honest, I would simply hope that we see The Waitresses over in this country, and soon-ish. Oh, and please hear this LP.

Paul Du Noyer