<< Back To Press Melody Maker : Live Review : The Cube : London 1990 The Whipping Boy is a good name. It has just the right quality of sadistic ambiguity to it to make the band, at the very least, of moderate interest. The song titles too, like "Switchblade Smile" and "Sugar I Swear" have that curious sickly-sweet touch to them that warrants attention. Certainly bands such as My Bloody Valentine seem to have spent their entire careers exploring this kind of honey-coated cyanide territory, but the messy androgeny of their delivery has always held them back. However, not much seems to hold the Whipping Boy back. From the moment they take the stage and Paul Page begins to pound blinding white fury out of his guitar the exact relationship between agony and ecstasy become clear. The aforementioned 'Sugar I Swear' pulses along with a rare and indiscriminate beauty, pumping up to some violent guitar drenched orgasm. Its about this time though, that things go a bit wrong, there's a problem with the base drum and drummer Colm Hassett leaves the stage. The other three ad-lib until the problem is sorted, playing a weird, rather fragile siren song - something like KLF with guitars - until Hassett re-appears. For the final song - the new single, 'I think I miss you' - everything shivers and collapses into an awesome apocalypse of Coppola - Esque proportions. Rollercoaster Michael Bonner