Review - Wild Billy Childish and the MBEs 'Thatcher's Children'

Billy Childish. Where do you start? In my head, there's this place fulla musicians who dwell in some kinda twilight zone. Mark E Smith is kicking The Hoosiers about in the car-park and the rest are playin' cards, drinkin'. Billy Childish twiddles his moustache and informs all that he is in fact a shape-shifter. He's also a rock 'n' roll symbiote. Rock 'n' roll is a parasite that got under his skin and instead of gettin' an injection to cure his fever, he's learned to live with the parasite and now, both can't function without each other.

During this card-game, the shape-shifter goes from '68 punk to '77 punk without much regard for anyone else. Like every five releases, instead of sticking, Childish gets weirder and wilder shouting "TWIST! TWIST!" Waiting for a stick, even though he's in triple figures and way passed getting pontoon, Childish jus' laughs and snorts and we get no closer to understandin' him.

We should applaud this awkwardness. Childish's back catalogue has a theme... no doubt... he digs parasitic rock 'n' roll that makes his skin itch. This theme however doesn't give you any guarantees other than, if you stare hard at his output, it's less a body of work, but a buncha LPs by loadsa different bands that you really like. Garage, balls-out punk, ska, country-blues... Childish ain't interested in keeping things fresh, rather, his attention span is shorter than his fuse and he needs shift plains, jus' so the parasite doesn't eat him up and leave him withered and gaunt. Although it's been a close shave at times.

So with this new release, 'Thatcher's Children' which sees him in Empirical mode, under the fine guise of Wild Billy Childish and the MBEs (the Musicians of the British Empire) we get to peer into Billy's world of 1977 skuzz. This bug-eyed view of punk sounds like a group playing amongst rubbish piled high and the stench... man... what a stench. I'm pretty certain that in between "what can you do when every little smile has to shine brand new" and "everyone's a loser", you can hear him gagging. Maybe that's something to do with the fact  "we're on our knees and sucking cock".

Apart from the gurgling and stink, this is an album that refuses to let up. It's all sneering and 4track bedroom riffs. For someone who has been around as long as he has, Wild Bill knows how to appeal to the fictional 14 year old in me. When his bass player, Nurse Julie cries "He's making a tape and it isn't for me..." I feel like my girlfriend is cheating on me. It makes me feel ill... in a good way.

Everyone else is gonna mention it, so I'd better. The album artwork is by Jamie Reid... y'know, the guy who did all those cut'n'paste punk ransom note covers. This is an LP with no hoodwinks of high-concept. Billy Childish put a band together and wanted to make a Brit punk record... and of course, punk went and conquered half the world like the British Empire... I'm guessing that, now I get the link, he's probably gonna break this band up and go country or summat. Anyway, this LP is out July 28th on Damaged Goods.

Comments

[PJ]

These songs have been going down a storm at the MBE's live gigs in recent months so I'm looking forward to hearing the album. Billy's taking the summer off from live performing but he's back on stage in London on Friday 22 August. See http://www.dirtywaterclub.com for more information.