Like the very best in American rock, there’s a guilty pleasure in listening to the Meddling Kids, or M-kids as they seem to like to be called. Any quick listen will bring out the classic contradictions that make it difficult to take them seriously, and impossible to get some of their tunes out of your head. They’re great musicians – listening to them is like admiring a well-calibrated machine performing complex tasks in perfect time. At the same time they have lyrics that, at best, are corny, and at worst deserve a good kick in the arse. Above all, though, they have a Friday-night, drinking and dancing attitude to songs – there’s no time to waste, and each song presents itself with a sizeable hook, ready to catch your attention immediately. It’s like being flirted aggressively with by a pneumatic bottle-blonde beauty – something to be enjoyed for what it is, and not necessarily to bring home to your mother, or to put alongside your Van Morrison record collection.

The band, from Rochester, New York, grew up listening to classic rock radio, picking up influences between Michael Jackson and Ratt, Van Halen and Huey Lewis, and it shows. Take the stomping let her go as a template for what the band is about (and you’d be hard put to find a better song to demonstrate that rock-scribe’s shorthand ‘stomping’). It starts with crunchy, chunky guitars choreographed for a crowd to clap their hands and punch the air. Straight away singer Tyler Norten (even the names fit) comes in with a cheesy lyric outlining the classic rock dillema: you’ve landed a hot chick who’s ‘no good for me’. It’s cliched, and bordering on the misogynist (hmm, bordering? ‘That bitch is killing me’), but when it kicks into the chorus you’re liable to drop your copy of the female eunuch and start twiddling your air guitar.

There isn’t an original or bad track on their self-titled debut album (the meddling kids, before you ask, is a reference to Scooby-Doo – you know, when the unmasked villain at the end explains his dastardly plot, ‘and I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you …’). This isn’t about innovation, or about profundity. It’s about spirit, energy, and rythm. They won’t change your life, but they will make any Friday night move better!