Album Review: Cookies by 1990s

Cookies is a ridiculous record - which is, you suspect, exactly what 1990s intended. Three scrawny veterans of Glasgow's indie scene, they play the kind of big, bold, cheesy rock'n'roll that is irresistible on the dance floor, but whose shortcomings are more evident when listened to on a home stereo. All brash chords and stomping rhythms, these songs - especially You're Supposed to Be My Friend - run so close to cliche at times, you can predict vocal yelps and drum thwacks seconds before they happen.

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Why would anyone name a band after the decade just past? As a sly way of saying that you don't give a damn about whether you fit into the trend of the moment? As a reference to an ever-so-slightly more prominent past? As homage to Pulp and Oasis and Blur and all the Brit pop bands that ruled the NME over the mid-1990s? As a commemoration of the decade which ended, for you, in the dissolution of your old band, Yummy Fur, and with two former mates going on to start the interstellar-popular Franz Ferdinand right under your nose? Or possibly just to fuck with people? Let's go with the last choice, because however sanguine or still-hurting Jackie McKeown is about his old band, however transfixed or blasé about mid-1990s Brit pop, he clearly likes to mess with people's heads. Which is fine, as long it brings with it this kind of superlatively snotty, bratty, sexually swaggering rock and roll. .

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