Billy Childish and the Musicians of the British Empire - Punk Rock at the British Legion Hall

Simply typing the band name and album title alone almost fills up the allotted word count for this review, but that's about the only piece of flab or over-elaboration on Wild Billy Childish's latest incarnation. Always the master of re-invention, (the Madonna of the garage-rock underground maybe? No, maybe not) the rocker/poet/artist and his two new bandmates have cut 14 short, sharp and sometimes witty slices of homemade punk 'n' roll. Billy's Johnny Rotten meets Paul Weller snarl sounds most potent when he's cutting false Gods down to size, such as on the opening track where "Rupert Murdoch rules the waves… and Joe Strummer's lying in his grave," and on upcoming single Snack Crack, raging that "watching Big Brother on the telly is just another case of lying on the sofa with a moron in your face." Easy targets they may be, but no other rock 'n' roll band are hitting those targets with such articulate, eccentric rage as the lavishly mustachioed Childish and friends. [Barry Jackson]