X-Ray Spex's one LP collects some of the ace singles that made them such an early punk standout, although it doesn't contain their classic first outing, the wild "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!" Styrene's songs focus on the artificiality of modern life; hence such titles as "The Day the World Turned Day-Glo" and "Warrior in Woolworths." Whether the tune is a ballad or a crazed rocker, the band surges as if there were no tomorrow. And for them, there wasn't. A masterpiece! (The CD reissue adds the originally omitted tracks for a more thorough rendering of the band's slim but spectacular output.) -- Trouser PressSmash the barriers and the truth shall make you free (as long as stocks last, anyway): barriers between humans and objects, between the natural (sic) and the Art—i—ficiaI (sicker).
Theses barriers mark the world which X—Ray—Spex inhabit and the world about which Poly Styrene writes with the sophisticated innocence that gives a tree and a supermarket equal value: never mind how it got got here (grew/cloned/came in a box), the fact remains that it’s here and what are we going to do about it? ·D0 you love it/do you hate it/here it is the way you made it/yeah.
"Germ-Free Adolescents" is the first and long-awaited X Ray Spex album, temporarily delayed while Poly Styrene recovered from the effects of letting her particular worldview get the better of her, and it neatly avoids the weakness of previous Spex gigs and records (i.e. cacophony, ramshackle playing boosted by road-drill volume) while t concentrating on the band’s strengths (great lyrics, nifty chewns, energy and a winningly knowing innocence).
A dozen songs (six per side in the grand manner, none too long, none too short) which will make sure that Poly Styrene gets the respect she deserves as a writer of rock songs and amateur social critic, gets more than simple junior-glossy notoriety as that little halfe-caste girl with the teeth-braces and the funny clothes.
The opening vision is of the world as one big supermarket, where everyone has to compete with all the other products. Opening with a shouted "Art-l-Ficial !" with a soupcon of echo, the sound is like a skinnier Pistols with Rudi Thomson's wheezy saxophone recalling David Bowie and Andy Mackay. ln the relative comfort and stillness of the studio, Poly's singing is more like singingand less like an air—raid siren with its tail caught in a mousetrap (can’t be bad), and the lyrics are couched in the superficially attractive but ultimately repellent terms beloved of copywriters (like the ice-lolly ad that says "New Nicer Taste" and begs the question of what it was like before).
"Obsessed With You" (usually introduced on stage as "Oo—Oo I’m Obsessed With You-oo/1-2-3—4!") is the song that everybody used to think » was about Johnny Rotten, mainly because the way Poly sings, "You are just a concept" sounds uncannily like "You are Johnny Rotten" if you d0n’t check the lyric sheet. lt’s one of a clutch of songs about the internal and external effects of celebhood, and also touches on Poly's perennial theme of L people—as-commodities: "You l are just a symbol/you are just a dream/you are just another figure/for the sales machine. " ( As Poly herself now is, of course. She bites far deeper into the same theme in "ldentity", which closes the first side. "ldentity" was the single that was on release when she had her nervous breakdown, and the lyric was harrowingly appropriate :"When you look in the mirror/do you smash it quick?/Do you take the glass/and slash your wrists?/Did you do it for fame?/Did you do it in a fit?/Did you do it before/you read about it?"
Naturally. This Modern World that we’ve all heard about so much recently is a most unhealthy place, and even grappling with the evil by nailing its colours to your masthead is not necessarily an adequate defence. "Warrior ln Woolworths" (a gently, compassionate piece with one of the album's best vocals and a snub nosed guitar overdub straight out of "Disraeli Gears") makes the same point: "Warrior In Woolworths/His roots are in today/Doesn’t know no history/He threw the past away/He’s the rebel on the underground/she’s the rebel in the modern town. " Ah, remember the days when Barry Melton used to inform us that "the subway is not the underground"? He's wrong: it is. Check out "Let's Submerge", a great rock and roll song in the ’50s tradition (Dave Edmunds could record it), which presents yer average tube station as a place of glamour and terror, not as a vicious arena ala Paul Weller but as something straight out of Cocteau.
"Genetic Engineering", which opens side two sets the theme for the cover: the band in test-tubes. Appropriately enough, Poly counts in the song in German, and there’s a faint aftertaste of Bowie's
European experiment in the texture, but the lyric is less than penetrating. Perhaps the album’s most endearing piece is "l Can't Do Anything", which begins like The Bishops’ "Baby You’re Wrong" (really) and goes on to set a softer, warmer variant of a Ramones pinhead song to a melody not a million miles away from "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?" The brilliance of this album is by no means uniform: "I Live Off You" is routine and "Plastic Bag" is by no means as excellently realised as it was on the original ‘ X-Ray—Spex demo tapes of a year or so back (this allusion is not elitism: I just wish you could have heard that version). Plus three A—sides (the title track, "ldentity", and the immortal "The Day The World Turned Dayglo") and one B-side ("I Am A Poseur") on an album makes for poor value in this man's supermarket.
Still its nice having the (almost) complete works of X—Ray-Spex in one place. What makes Poly Styrene a more appealing commodity than many of her fellow chroniclers of the urban delusion is the warmth and ’ wit of her writing and singing, and her refusal to capitulate to the Big Freeze by reducing herself to yet another blueprint on a different drawing board. l hope she wins (just as l hope that we don’t get buried in an avalanche of albums with diagrams of washing machines and refrigerators on the innersleeves), because despite her subject matter- or even because of it - her music says that human resources beat mechanical resources every time. And while the difference between the two is till discernible, that's the wonder of Spex. -- Charles Shaar Murray, NME
review
[-] by Steve HueyPerhaps the most utopian aspect of the U.K. punk scene was that it offered creative, articulate young people the opportunity to express themselves, and to kick up an exuberantly noisy racket in the process. X-Ray Spex certainly came from this wing of the movement, the brainchild of two female schoolmates who re-christened themselves Poly Styrene and Lora Logic. X-Ray Spex was far from the only female-centered British punk act, but they were arguably the best, combining exuberant energy with a cohesive worldview courtesy of singer and songwriter Poly Styrene. As her nom de punk hinted, Styrene was obsessed with the artificiality she saw permeating Britain's consumer society, linking synthetic goods with a sort of processed, manufactured humanity. Styrene's frantic claustrophobia permeates the record, as she rails in her distinctively quavering yowl against the alienation she feels preventing her from discovering her true self. Germ Free Adolescents is tied together by Styrene's yearning to be free not only from demands for consumption, but from the insecurity corporate advertisers used to exploit their targets (especially in women) -- in other words, to enjoy being real, imperfect, non-sterile humans living in a real, imperfect, non-Day-Glo world. Fortunately, the record is just as effective musically as it is conceptually. It's full of kick-out-the-jams rockers, with a few up-tempo thrashers and surprisingly atmospheric pieces mixed in; the raw, wailing saxophone of Rudi Thomson (who replaced Lora Logic early on) gives the band its true sonic signature. The CD reissue of Germ Free Adolescents appends both sides of the classic debut single "Oh Bondage Up Yours!," one of the most visceral moments in all of British punk -- which means everything you need is right here.
― Algerian Goalkeeper, Wednesday, 27 March 2013 18:11 (thirteen years ago)