Perhaps the only shortcoming holding the Photos back was Wu’s voice. The layered and large production is able to achieve the tricky balance of offering taut and tough guitars within songs that sweep and even soar at times. Overall, the songs are straight to the slanted point aesthetic of power-pop with some cuts wearing a splash of reggae-which humidified the UK air at the time. It also sounds like a highlight from an old episode of Rock Over London before being taped over and existing only in memory. Their stellar rendition of Bacharach-David’s "I Just Don't Know What to Do with Myself" fittingly concludes the proper album. “Friends,” a standout slower number building on Spector's wall of sound, could have been the closing number on the Valley Girl Soundtrack. Songs like the dashing "Irene" would have sounded perfect on Rhino's Just Can't Get Enough: New Wave Hits of the '80s or their DIY series from 1993.
This is one band that accurately sounds like their graphic design while being fortunately directly inspired by Blondie despite their frequent denials.
The Photos actually hailed from Evesham-a civil parish between London and Birmingham and instantly expressed their chagrin when pegged as the British Blondie. Louis before moving their impossible dreams to N.Y. My initial impression was that the band was originally from somewhere like St. Moreover, a band featuring a female lead singer with an assumed Chinese surname of Wu was certainly striking during this angular time. Groups that were female-fronted and supported by male backing musicians were surprisingly rare in the new wave-era despite the runaway commercial and critical success of Blondie and the Pretenders. What was further intriguing was that the band was led by a woman who went by the stage name of Wendy Wu (not the Homecoming Warrior). When I first came across this album from 1980, I was excited to discover a power-pop band that I have never previously before encountered.
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