The third and final
Pink Fairies
studio album,
Kings of Oblivion
, welcomed guitarist
Larry Wallis
to the brew, bringing with him some of the band's most remarkable -- and concise -- material yet. The opening
"City Kids,"
famously recut by
Motoerhead
during
Wallis
' sojourn with that band, is as dynamic an opener as
the Pink Fairies
ever had, while the album's two epics,
"I Wish I Was a Girl"
and
"Street Urchin,"
similarly catch the band as they made a sharp turn away from the rockin' riff jam basics that scarred their second LP,
What a Bunch of Sweeties
, and moved instead into the affirmative guttercat stance that so effectively predicted the rudiments of
punk rock
. Indeed, if any album could be said to have been born ahead of its time,
, conceived in 1973 but sounding just like 1977, is it. In common with the rest of the remastered
albums,
divides its bonus tracks between unfamiliar versions of familiar material (most pressingly, an urgent alternate mix of
"City Kids"
) and non-album material. This includes two versions of the loping
"Well Well Well"
and the
country rock-ish
"Hold On"
dating from 1972, and a single cut with
' short-lived predecessor,
Mick Wayne
, and it's gratifying to have them on CD at last. Truly, though,
could exist just as happily without the extras; greeted at the time as
' best album, it remains a tightly coiled, furiously adrenalined beast, the summation of everything that
promised and all that subsequent reunions have continued to deliver. ~ Dave Thompson