My Top 1000 Songs #939: The Deadbeat

[I've been writing up my Top 1000 songs on a daily basis--you can see them all in descending order by hitting the All My Favorite Songs tag.]

There goes that jerk, taking up a scarce slot on his list with an obscure b-side that nobody's ever heard...

But, yep, gonna do it.

Rising from the ashes of my beloved Undertones, guitarist brothers John & Damian O'Neill put together That Petrol Emotion in the mid-80s. I remember being a little underwhelmed by their 1986 debut, Manic Pop Thrill, though I played its lead-off single "It's A Good Thing" on my radio show a lot at the time. So I was kinda surprised when I picked up the CD reissue and was immediately drawn to bonus track "The Deadbeat," a song relegated to the b-side of "Good Thing." Which seems crazy, as it's a relentlessly driving, catchy song that sounds perfectly designed to be thrown onto a mixtape and cranked up in the car with the windows down. It's arguably their most Undertones-reminiscent song (despite, oddly, being one of the TPE tracks not written by John O'Neill, who'd been that band's primary songwriter).

I didn't keep up with the band after the first record, though I later circled back and picked up their run of 80s/90s albums, and found much to like in their fulsome blend of post-punk/alternative rock and nascent Britpop.