The Molotovs
Wasted On Youth

“You fall in love with everything, when you’re young. You think a guitar, a bass, and a drum kit are enough to conquer the world, when you’re young. Life is a strong liquor that makes you tipsy, when you’re young. Life surprises you with thousands of things to do and you can’t wait to grow up, when you’re young.”

That’s what Paul Weller sang in a song by the Jam, it was August 1979, and maybe even Issey and Mathew’s parents weren’t born yet; but that single, on some unknown day, they bought it, along with the entire Jam discography, and song after song, album after album, they convinced themselves that those three were better than the Clash, better than the Damned, even better than the Sex Pistols and any other band that set London ablaze at the end of the ‘70s. And after Issey was born, as if nothing had happened, they kept relentlessly playing those songs on the turntable; and the music certainly didn’t stop when, a couple of years later, Mathew came into the world.

Today, maybe “In The City” and “This Is The Modern World” spin less on the Cartlidge family turntable, but for mum and dad it’s enough to step into Issey’s room and hear her pounding on the bass and singing backing vocals along to “Town Called Malice”; or to walk into Mathew’s room and find him furiously strumming the guitar to “Slow Down”—which some know-it-all once told me wasn’t by the Jam, but trust an idiot: it is, for the same reason “Brand New Cadillac” is by the Clash, now and forever; or to put on the turntable Issey and Mathew’s debut album.

It’s a good story, that of the Molotovs, in its pure rock’n’roll simplicity.

They started out as a busking cover band in 2020, Issey was 13 and Mathew 11; their combined ages didn’t even reach half of mine and that already puts me in a great mood, for the simple reason that, if anyone still has to play the notes of “My Generation”, it’s far more believable—and above all promising—for a couple of kids to play them for a bunch of kids who are listening, the kind of youngsters that can’t even have a beer when they’re in a pub. They have a repertoire crammed with songs by the Jam and songs the Jam covered—“Slow Down” but also “Heatwave”—but also seasoned with the history of English pop, from the Who to the Oasis. They set up on a sidewalk or in a square and leave their instrument cases open in front of them; someone always drops a coin, barely enough to cover the fare for the trip home; sometimes someone else leaves a business card with a phone number and a handwritten invitation on the back to call that number, because he owns a venue, he likes them, and he’d love for them to play there, etcetera, etcetera. Issey and Mathew call that number, and as a result, after a couple of years, they rack up over 500 live gigs and become good enough to perform not only the songs that made history, but also to play alongside those who helped write that history, in the flesh and all that. Issey and Mathew, at that time, hadn’t even recorded a single song yet.

In that repertoire jam-packed with covers, there are a dozen songs written by Issey and Mathew. At some point, whether out of courage or recklessness, they start playing them live, slipping them in between a “Teenage Kicks” and a random “London Calling”, just to see what happens: the folks hearing them are impressed; so am I, even if I’m way outside the crowd, a couple thousand kilometers away and a few years late. Above all, there’s one song I think is beautiful, called “Johnny Don’t Be Scared”, the first one they recorded on vinyl, and the only one excluded from the album. I might be crazy, but the first thing that comes to mind are the Clash writing equally wonderful songs, which then would routinely not make it on the albums, often relegated to B-sides of singles, and I actually love that about them.

All the other Issey and Mathew songs are on “Wasted On Youth”: the “Jam à gogo” of “Get A Life”, “More, More, More”, the title track, “Newsflash” and “Today’s Gonna Be Our Day” is nothing less than the absolutely believable revival of a sound that’s nearly 50 years old, but if it’s true that this music used to come out of every London garage in 1977, it’s equally true that no one in 1977 could have played like “Wasted On Youth” sounds today; “Daydreaming” is a powerful concentrate of ‘90s Britpop, like the Oasis got back together and put out a great song when no one hoped for it anymore; “Come On Now” seems ripped straight out of Jimmy Page’s gig at the Greek with the Black Crowes; “Ge-ge-ge-raldine” is a stuttering and affectionate homage to “My ge-ge-ge-neration”; and, thank god, there’s even a “Nothing Keeps Her Away” that strikes me as a not-so-successful attempt to recreate the Green Day style of “Good Riddance.”

“Then you find out that life isn’t quite what you’d hoped it would be, that you had all these great dreams only to see them shattered in the end,” Paul Weller sang at some point.

Maybe it’ll end up like that for Issey and Mathew too, but I wish for them to stay forever young, even if that was sung by Bob Dylan and not Paul Weller.