Album Review : The Richies – Autumn Fall

It’s always good to hear what’s going in the rest of the world. so when we received two albums from German label Hulk Räckorz, they went on the list, firing the German language album over to my better educated and bi-lingual colleague I am covering The Richies latest release “Autumn Fall“. This is their first album in 23 years, an album that competes a cycle of seasonal releases alongside 1990’s”Winter Wonderland“, 1991’s “Spring Surprise” and 1993’s “Pet Summer“, quite where their last full length release, 1996’s “Why Lie? Need A Beer!“, fits into the seasonal theme is anyone’s guess, but on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the debut single “Fish Licence” The Richies are back.

Sometimes punk bands change and evolve over time and embrace different styles and genres, The Richies are definitely not one of those bands, armed only with the Ramones back catalogue they remind you that three chords is sometimes enough. There is little subtlety as for the most part this is beer driven singalong punk rock, although the occasional inclusion of revved up classical excerpts can be a bit off-putting. Some of the song titles appear to suffer from literal translations, with one of the album’s somewhat surprisingly subtler moments “If Life Is Just A Bottle Of Beer, I’m Just A Single Molecule Of A Fart” being a prime example, but as I’m not really in a position to criticise anyone’s foreign language skills I’ll just focus on the music.

The Richies don’t bring anything new to the party, this is an album that is influenced by old school punk rock, but when listening to “Autumn Fall” you get a sense that The Richies are a band that love what they do and do what they love, and that really comes across. I defy anyone with a love of punk rock, and especially of the aforementioned Ramones, not to have a smile on their face when listening to this album. The best way to describe The Richies is to try and imagine if Germany tried to apply the principles of it’s beer purity laws to regulate the ingredients in a punk album, limiting it to the four essentials of bass, drums, guitar and 1234.

“Autumn Fall” is set to be released on the 27th September via Hulk Räckorz and The Richies website can be found here