Of course, by now, we all know punk rock to be an utter sham, a charade at best hijacked by those who don’t give a fuck when in fact the opposite has to be the key to its appeal. But it is still a thrill to find somebody breaking all the fucking rules, if they’re doing it properly. Not just that, but doing it in a way that leaves some residual trace of its existence behind. And to do this all a couple of years shy of a bus pass just negates the credentials of a thousand kids – signed and unsigned – in carefully torn jeans and dubiously marketed Shockwave hair-slap.
You should now be familiar with Mission Of Burma’s infamous comeback in 2004 with ‘ONoffON’, their second album, two decades after their lauded 1982 debut. And that against all odds it was a magnificently vitriolic, accomplished lump of molten agit-rock. You only get back together after so long for nostalgia, for money, for ego. And when you do your original sense of meaning, moral backbone and wild juvenile naivity has inevitably shattered leaving a hollow shell. But Mission of Burma, like we said, break all the fucking rules.
Of course little has changed since their debut in terms of style, but when they’re still writing better and better songs that’s the last thing you expect. You did read the last paragraph!? Their post-Stooges, pre-Fugazi, Gang Of Four-peered racket, with REM’s original arty, political sense of being, has served them extremely well, still sounding fresh and vibrant now, sailing way above all those bands just blindly plundering ‘Entertainment’. The stomping, caustic ‘Spiders Web’ is the kind of surging melodic graft that Foo Fighters probably think they exhibit, ‘Let Yourself Go’ is mind-bendingly psychedelic with a rigid spine at least on a level with a peaking QOTSA and ‘1001 Pleasant Dreams’ feels like Liars and the Beach Boys having a go at grunge. And that’s just the beginning.
So they continue, but they don’t just continue. They return with an album that doesn’t only out-do ‘ONoffON’, but perhaps eclipses their debut too. All the rules. Smashed.