To call Layabouts chest-beating/car-loving/girl-banging rock n’ roll as being derivative is to say rock n’ roll is derivative of rock n’ roll. If you stay true to the message, the music you make is un-fuck-with-able.
Spain’s Layabouts make the kind of music that only Europeans are capable of — the totally irony-free in-your-face verse/chorus punch that you get from decades worth of worshipping/emulating the bones of The Ramones, Led Zeppelin, AC/DC et al. In Spain they would be worshipped as heroes. In Spain they probably are worshipped as heroes, with all the groupies and excesses imaginable to four guys rocking hard in leather jackets and tight jeans.
Nothing about Layabouts is half-assed or lacking spirit. They just happened to miss the last rock n’ roll train back into fashion which The Datsuns (remember them?) and The Hives and the like clambered on almost a decade ago. The stadium rock frenzy of “It‘s All Dead“ and Queens Of The Stone-Age homage “Numbers/Figures” prove that Layabouts can walk the walk and incite small riots, but when your opening gambit is a track called “Rock‘s Dead“, it‘s best not to get all rock lyric critic on their English-as-a-second-language asses.
If you like your music brain-searing loud but without a cerebral core, or if you‘re a Spaniard with a raging rock boner needing release, Savage Behaviour is calling your name.
