One of the key albums made on the periphery of the late-1970s
punk
explosion,
Deviants
frontman
Mick Farren
's return to raw
rock
, following most of a decade spent in journalism, was less a timely resurrection than it was a vicious reminder that none of this new noise was actually very new. He'd been doing exactly the same stuff a decade before, and would still be doing it two decades hence. In the 1960s, after all,
the Deviants
depicted the underside of the peace and love rhetoric by asking just one simple question: what will happen if the revolution succeeds? In the 2000s, they pinpoint the formless agitation which has sucked the optimism out of everything. And in the 1970s,
Farren
solo snagged the tabloid nihilism which now dominated the
scene, and played it up for all it was worth.
Vampires
was released hot on the heels of one of the most glorious singles of the era, the seething teen riot anthem
"Let's Loot the Supermarket Again Like We Did Last Summer"
; indeed, combine that one track with the best bits of
and there's probably no better illustration of
's (continued) ability to press the pulse of the period. Possibly unintentionally, and now certainly unbelievably,
marks the closest
has ever strayed towards becoming a true commercial proposition. He opens the album with a
Frank Zappa
cover, rather than a mutated approximation of what he thought the
Mothers
should sound like -- at the height of Britain's late 70s culture wars,
"Trouble Coming Every Day"
had been screaming out for reinvention, but
did more than that. Shortened and sharpened, stripped of weary cynicism and imbibed instead with apocalyptic foreboding, it became the statement of intent and detente which the
punks
had been trying to elucidate all along, and proved that all the latest generation were really doing was mainstreaming the imagery of the radicals of ten years before. In truth, the remainder of
cannot live up to such an incendiary beginning; in its favor, it doesn't even try. With the exception of the remarkably prescient
"Bela Lugosi,"
dedicated to the man who would, a year hence, be subpoenaed by
Bauhaus
to create the
gothic
movement,
plays a hard-drinking, beautifully wasted game, living up to a dissolute image which may or may not have been
's personal modus operandi at the time, but certainly summed up his public persona.
"Half Price Drinks,"
"I Want a Drink,"
"Drunk in the Morning"
-- there's a definite conceptual angle here, and a rewarding game of spot the rock star, too, as
ropes in
Chrissie Hynde
,
Wilco Johnson
Curved Air
's
Sonja Kristina
Pink Fairy
Larry Wallis
, and sundry past and future
to add to the dyspeptic ambience. It's probably the least essential album in
's canon, distilling his dark visions into bite sized morsels of fairly catchy poppy songs. But it is also the most enjoyable; a rolling, boiling, sassy swagger which makes only one persistent demand on the listeners. They have to buy the next round. ~ Dave Thompson