The Peppermint Kicks - Pop Rocks In My Chewing Gum (2025) Hi-Res

The fact that the opening track here is an homage to the radio is basically all you need to know about Peppermint Kicks.

And if you don’t know them? Here’s what you’ve missed: everything.

In the middle of England, in a time before the internet — what I like to call the “good old days” — in the mid-to-late ’80s, we’d discover music by listening to The Friday Rock Show with Tommy Vance on our portable radios, scribbling down furious notes about stuff we had to investigate at the record library the following week.

I don’t know how they did it in the US, but hopefully, the rock ‘n’ roll lifers in The Peppermint Kicks understand on some level. Surely they do. They simply must.

Put simply: “Pop Rocks In My Chewing Gum” doesn’t get made unless you completely get rock ‘n’ roll.

“Radio Wam Bam Boom” is so glam rock that Sweet probably wish they’d written it — and they’re just getting started.

Swagger? You bet. “Too Sweet (Oh Yeah)” drips with it, and that’s before you even get to the harmonies. “Number One Record”, meanwhile, deserves to be just that for the lo-slung lead alone.

“Little Doll (Piccola Pupa)” sounds exactly like the 7-inch records I was buying with my pocket money, back when I was a six-year-old obsessed with the J. Geils Band. And when they slow the pace for “Shangri-La”, it sounds as carefree as a bloke on a hammock with tomorrow off.

That said, there’s something about when they quicken the pace that really suits them. Cheap Trick hangs heavy over “Lollipop Girl”, and “Out Of The Trash Can” is simply perfect pop music.

TPK don’t take it all too seriously, either. There’s a bit of cartoon fun with the hooky, ’60s-flavoured “Gigantor” — he’s here to save the world from humankind, apparently — and there’s some mighty power pop in “Speed Racer”, the type of thing only American bands ever seem to get right.

And that lingering suggestion that they, like me, just wish it was a different time is underlined by the quite magical “We Did It All For Rock N Roll”. Think ELO. Think Mott. But above all, think about The Peppermint Kicks.

Dan Kopko and Sal Baglio have been doing it for rock ‘n’ roll for years, and “Pop Rocks In My Chewing Gum” is as much a sugar rush as a sherbet dip.