we're so miserable and stunning

It's really all ZZ Top's fault.

OK, so I was in the Virgin Megastore in Manchester on Saturday morning. Ostensibly, I'd gone in to find my daughter a DVD for her birthday and, with there being nothing that caught my eye, I stumbled upon ZZ Top's Greatest Hits CD for £3.99. Whilst brosing, I started listening to the music that was playing in the store which had caught my ear.

I was pretty sure it was Fall Out Boy, but it wasn't as, er, heavy and spiky as the stuff of theirs I had heard, so I checked with the girl at the cash desk.

Twenty four hours later, for the pricely sum of £6.94, the album was mine.

I still wasn't sure what I was doing when I put it on the other night. But, and it is a big but, it's actually (whisper it quietly) Really Quite Good.

Oddly, the songs where they get the heavy guitars out are the ones I like the least. The rest are, pure and simple, pop songs with guitars. No different to pop songs with keyboards or pop songs with shreiky vocals. From opening song "Thriller" through the irritatingly cactchy top 3 hit "This Ain't A Scene It's An Arms Race" to the great "Hum Hallelujah" it's a great selection of catchy pop rock records.

For some reason however, Fall Out Boy seem to be the bastard child of Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman when it comes to the naming of their tracks. Not content with "Don't You Know Who I Think I Am?" they also charm us with "You're Crashing But You're No Wave", "I've Got All This Ringing In My Ears But None On My Fingers" and the utterly preposterous "I'm Like A Lawyer With The Way I'm Always Trying To Get You Off".

Good grief. Lads. Really?

Anyway, it's a great little record. The teenagers will of course love it ("We're the new face of failure. Prettier and younger but not any better off....") but I have to confess to being converted too. I'm off to buy myself some eye-liner and a My Chemical Romance hoodie.