tracks on LP: Roots, Radicals, Rockers And Reggae / Just Fade Away / Go For It / The Only One / Hits And Misses / Kicking Up A Racket / Safe As Houses / Gate 49 / Silver Lining / Piccadilly Circus
Chrysalis Records CHR 1339
Producer: Doug Bennett
Recorded at Jam Studios, Tollington Park, London: 23/02/81 to 02/03/81
Released: 17/04/81
Purchased: 25/04/81
IT’S IRONIC that SLF’s original public and press should be precisely what stands in their way today. There are those who want to keep them in their teens, ship them back to Belfast and insist that they repeat ‘Inflammable Material’ over and over. Then there are the others who insist that down the line punk rock of the SLF variety is passe, my dears, alright in it’s time maybe – but already a dinosaur.
‘Go For It’ won’t dispose of the arguments of either camp but perhaps we should look for other ways of looking at SLF. This isn’t a raw, rough record, nor is it ‘Oi!’ music. For the most part, it’s well played and well produced clean hard rock with the recognisable SLF trademarks. Jake Burns‘ voice is as whisky gravelly as of yore, the guitars are determined, bass and drums are precise. SLF in the studio are altogether cleaner and more precise at what they do.
Which, of course, is the problem. Cleanliness has never been one of punk’s most important qualities and live, at least, SLF remain a punk band. On record however, we might do better to start thinking of them as a hard driving power pop band. These are merely labels but power pop is renowned for melody and melody has always been a strong part of SLF.
Check out “Just Fade Away” or “Silver Lining” here. Or the major departure, the C and W style “Gate 49”.
‘Go For It’ has characteristically committed lyrics from manager Gordon Ogilvie that cajole and command the audience to “go for it”, to avoid succumbing to the rat trap of sexism are repeating one’s parents lives. The music is as direct as the lyrics, the attack as upfront didactic.
SLF don’t change, why should they, they’ll say, hard rock is hard rock. They don’t change, they just get more professional at what they do. It’s unfair that getting better doesn’t necessarily improve a punk band. *** (Record Mirror, 18/04/81)
Stiff Little Fingers | Go For It | Chrysalis | 1981
STIFF LITTLE FINGERS Go For It (Chrysalis) STIFF LITTLE Fingers’ problem over the past few years has been finding a new path after the raw fury of ‘Inflammable Material’. If at times they looked in danger of embracing rock flash with all the enthusiasm of a second class Clash, their fourth album ‘Go For It’ keeps that clear sense of optimistic energy and still sounds sincere.
Most of SLF no longer live in the Belfast environment that gave rise to that first unrepeatable rage, and ‘Go For It’ deals with a different set of contemporary issues. Ex Daily Express journalist Gordon Ogilvie, the fifth offstage member of the group, has co-written a set of lyrics that keep a credible balance between teen pop angst and more serious social concerns, and his simple style of expressing attitudes is nevertheless an effective method of putting across a political point.
‘Go To It’ covers a cross-section of subjects from the private pleasure of turning the stereo sound up high in ‘Kicking Up A Racket’, to a questioning description of self-perpetuating role-playing in ‘Safe As Houses’. In between there’s a vivid attack on the social attitudes that result in violence against women, a paean to the escapist pleasures of airports and an indictment of an economic strategy that demands we all grin and bear the consequences of a crushing recession.
Only once, on ‘Piccadilly Circus’, an account of a friend’s senseless stabbing, could they be accused of the voyeurism that incensed some about the sentiments SLF express on Northern Ireland.
Musically, ‘Go For It’ avoids the purposeless sound of punk pulled from its roots by making forays into a variety of styles without ever straying too far from the recognisable SLF sound. There’s an appealing instrumental, a cheerful cover of ‘Roots, Radicals, Rockers And Reggae’, a pastiche of 50s pop and some fast, straightforward rock, all carried by a tunefulness and spirit that injects the simplest of songs with a fresh enthusiasm.
At least, SLF have proved you can build on crude political punk without banging your head against a brick wall of static sound and stances. ‘Go For It’ should be welcomed as a way out. (NME, 18/04/81)
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