Eternal cynic that he is,
Billy Childish
is just the man who would name an album
Failure Not Success
, though by any creative standpoint, he's been as consistently successful as any man in rock & roll since the late 1970s. How many people have made over 150 albums and can honestly say the significant majority of them are actually good? Just as remarkably, after more than 45 years of making music,
Childish
hasn't come close to losing his touch, and 2023's
, cut with his combo
Wild Billy Childish & CTMF
, is practically a catalog of what he does well. You get some gutsy garage rock ("Come into My Life"), lyrically confessional glimpses into his soul ("Failure Not Success"), blues-based stompers ("Becoming Unbecoming Me"), great, fuzzed-out guitar instrumentals ("Walk of the Sasquatch"), broadsides on rock culture ("Bob Dylan's Got a Lot to Answer For"), and stripped-down, reverent covers (
Richard Hell
's "Love Comes in Spurts" and
Jimi Hendrix
's "Fire"). This isn't radically different from the typical
album, but part of what makes him interesting is both what he does and how he does it.
has a formula, and it's fueled with passion and a furious commitment to his aesthetic, and he pours sweaty conviction into his work every time he takes the stage or enters the studio. His guitar style is elemental and full-bodied, and he can take on
Hendrix
and
Robert Quine
's leads and effectively graft them to his lo-fi worldview. He can rearrange the basic building blocks of garage-leaning rock in an almost infinite variety of ways without losing sight of what makes them connect. He's also a fearless songwriter who can share childhood trauma, boldly proclaim his love, or consider the pros and cons of some of rock's most legendary artists with unpretentious intelligence and wit. How many other people in rock & roll can do all that, cram it onto a 37-minute LP, and make it fun at the same time?
is one of rock & roll's most distinctive talents and fearless thinkers as well as being a strongman who makes
Robert Pollard
look lazy;
will remind fans of why they're lucky to have him around, and it's a better-than-average way to introduce newbies to his creative world. ~ Mark Deming