Wednesday, May 23, 2012

"I was afraid, coming back to the album and listening to it in full and in sequence that it would sound tinnily dated and disappointing in 2012, superseded by the sheer volume, capacity and weight of 21st century recordings – that it would seem significant only as a pivotal, if improperly acknowledged moment in the dialectical process. But no – crank it up and immediately I experienced again the rush of blood I felt as a young writer, having just interviewed the band in Zurich, heading to a cafe in the city that had been a Dadaist hangout back in 1916 in naïve search of psychogeographic inspiration, blackening a notebook with screeds of adjectival frenzy as the album raged on my headphones. It retains both its molten power and own, grandiose sense of purpose – the fire that came along to torch an entire era of white-socked hipsters, crewcut mumbling indie dullards, smirking ironists, lumpen, Luddite grebos and post-Live Aid white soul hegemonists and Bono's stupid big white hat."

-- David Stubbs, on the Young Gods's debut album, 25 years on

"This year, somebody wrote of the Young Gods that 'occasionally they veer a little close to pomp rock'. Christ almighty, whoever that somebody was should have all his toes wrenched out and be made to eat them one by one. Obsessively afraid of hippiedom, of turning into Rick Wakeman, we giggle and scrabble on in our obsolete punkish ways, fiddling while Zurich burns." 

-- David Stubbs, on Melody Maker's Album of the Year, 1987