Noise Addict

January 18 - 25, 1 9 9 6

*** Noise Addict

MEET THE REAL YOU

(Grand Royal)

Alice Cooper was in his mid 20s when he scored his first hit with "Eighteen." Ben Lee, the 17-year-old frontman of Australia's Noise Addict, was still 16 when he wrote "16," a less-melodramatic ode to being half-boy/half-man that sets the tone for the band's second release on the Beastie Boys' Grand Royal label. That doesn't make Lee a better manchild than Cooper, but it certainly adds some novelty appeal to the Noise Addict cause.

With its tunefully simple combination of ratty, garage-rock guitars and artlessly charming vocal melodies, "16" doesn't pretend to be anything more than a winsome pop tune. But Lee brings a knowing sense of irony to his delivery of lines like "I'm so mad/I thought my life would be like a John Hughes film." And, with help from Chicago studio-wiz Brad Wood, the band hold the short, sweet arrangement together with a confidence that was lacking on Noise Addict's 1994 EP, Young and Jaded. More than ever, Lee is reminiscent of a young and awkward Jonathan Richman, saluting the redemptive power of rock and roll in "Body Scrabs & Bizzos" and professing his love to a girl who just ain't interested in "Blemish." And sometimes teen angst really does resonate with more sincerity when it comes from the mouth of an actual teenager.

-- Matt Ashare