Friday 4 September 2015

Public Image Ltd. - What the World Needs Now.., album review

Old Git

It's wonderful to hear how John Lydon has transformed into a domestic miserable old git, thus allowing me a modicum of affinity, though it was the aging rather than miserableness that seemed 'new', though again, at 59, only 2 years my junior, he isn't as relatively young as I had always thought, my having considered punk, which usurped my prog and rock era, a youngish phenomenon.

This is on first listen a lightly nasty if satirical take on life rather than a snarling disregard. It's the opening track Double Trouble that establishes thus: Lydon mock-grumpy and complaining about domestic nagging - the toilet's fucking broken again - which leads into a great punk riff and John sounding increasingly like a Dalek. Bettie Page has Lydon taking the piss out of America and American accents and then other cultural aspects, the greatest pornographic country of the world. On C'est la Vie he sounds like another musical ol' codger: Roy Harper. It's really Bonzo Dog with vestiges of a sneer, and punk pulses.

Title song and main lyric What the world needs now....is another Fuck Off is quite compelling in its differing kind of pulsing beat and the most genuinely angry mantra of the lyrics on the album. This, along with I'm Not Satisfied and the reggae-ish Big Blue Sky, provide songs that reveal broader thought in all aspects of the writing and performance.


No comments:

Post a Comment