The Checks’ yelping teenage energy and genuine rock’n’roll smarts saw them burst onto the scene a few years back and the UK certainly took the kids from Auckland’s North Shore to their hearts with bucketloads of press type gush coming their way from the likes of NME. And for once, we’d like to say, the hype was justified, because if you wanted to see a bunch of kids surging with the power to testify, it was The Checks bounding onto the stage and laying waste with teenage anthems like ‘Tired of Sleeping’. Now onto their second album, Alice By The Moon, one listen to the assured swagger of singles like ‘You and Me’, with its intoxicating air of rock power, shows that the album is, as a happy US blogger recently wrote, “solid rock and roll with just enough swampy dirt to suck you in and just enough hooks to pull you back out again. Crunching guitars and creeping beats that have look to put Alice By The Moon on my year’s best albums list so far. For reals.”