Reviewed by Paul Wright

Eyes front, Alternative Cadets, here’s your chance to broaden your horizons! ‘Trouble With X’ looks like new-wave punk but it sounds like 1940’s swing. Like Cake And The Mavericks, The W’s are a band from the West Coast (California not Cornwall!) who exchange Cool for Anticool, and it works! Goth Mike liked it, Alternative Chris liked, and I like it. If you can spare the dosh after buying Green Day, check it out. It’s got ragtime, Dixie, swing and even that brassy variety of Latin jazz whose name I forget. On the downside, the vocals are hard to make out sometimes, and the production is Christian Cardboard rather than Wordly Wood (sorry, patriots!) But this album has humour and that’s what sold it to me. For those who care, one of The W’s first “thanks” in the credits goes to Sanctuary, the USA’s biggest alternative church.

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