Jaed are a female-fronted Australian four-piece punk-rock band who sing songs about the crippling demons that come with being a teenage heroin addict with an abusive father.

Still here? Bloody hell, well done. Anyway, you’ll be pleased to know that Jaed’s album Dirty Days isn’t the miserable, scab-picking, tear-stained dirge you’d expect it to be. Quite the opposite, in fact – it actually sounds a bit like Son Of Dork. If Son Of Dork sang songs about sitting in pools of blood and throwing up in rivers, that is.

There are two things that save Dirty Days by Jaed from falling into
boring introspective rubbishness. First is the sheer ramalama, radio-friendly
bounciness of it – we really weren’t kidding about the Son Of Dork
thing – and second is lead singer Vanessa Eve‘s sarcastic black humour
about her crappy-sounding childhood.

Catherine opens Dirty Days; it’s a 47 second frenzy of pop-punk
snottiness about someone who doesn’t wash their knickers. We think -
the track burns itself out before we’re even allowed to order our
thoughts. It’s followed by recent single My Way – about busking the
streets to fund a heroin addiction, kids – which is shot through with
an aerodynamic maturity reminiscent of Queens Of The Stone Age.

That’s the blueprint for Dirty Days, and it’s one that a team of
marketing strategists would be hard pressed to invent. Lyrics about
being annoyed, messed-up and (to quote the press release) "saying fuck
you" strapped to irreverent tunes that all but force the listener to
bounce around their bedroom to; is there are teenager in the world who
isn’t going to instantly fall for that?

If we had to pick holes in Dirty Days, we’d say that Jaed are a
little too much in thrall to Nevermind, and that there are are couple
of moments – noticeably on the album’s slower numbers, like Sleeping Beauty
and Scream – that the listener will come out in hives under the
mistaken belief that they’ve been tricked into listening to an Alanis
Morissette album. But these are minor niggles – Dirty Days by Jaed
might just be the best Drinking Nasty Cider In The Memorial Gardens
After School album of the year.

[review by Stuart Heritage]