The Damned

Black Is The Night BMG

From pies in faces to just desserts.

It’s easy to underrate the Damned. Unless you’re actually listening to them. It’s their own fault for having a sense of humour, for putting on a show and entertaining audiences while others sopped up critical acclaim by glowering glumly at their fretboards. Despite musical roots in Stooges and Nuggets, the Damned are a tremendously British institution: a glam-rockHammer-horror McGill postcard; half-Todd Slaughter melodrama, half-Beano annual. Are the Damned from the street? If that street’s Bash Street, then yes. And finally, having recently gravitated from ballroom circuit to Royal Albert Hall and London Palladium, they’re a national treasure. They’ve arrived. It’s official.

So why not celebrate with a festive 39-track greatest hits? Of course, they’ve released countless similar before, but since then made their latterperiod Evil Spirits masterpiece with Tony Visconti, recalibrating their career from ‘heritage act’ to ‘write-off-at-your-peril’.

Unbound from strict chronology (punk hit Love Song opens, coming-of-age Whoinformed Wait For The Black Out follows), Black…’s tracklist has been chosen by the band and just keeps on giving. Ten songs in, New Rose and Neat Neat Neat follow Smash It Up. Then come the bits you might even have forgotten: Eloise, Grimly Fiendish, an epic Curtain Call, a majestic Dr Jeckyll And Mr Hyde and (measuring up in the company of its exalted elders), Standing On The Edge Of Tomorrow.

It’s easy to underrate the Damned, but impossible to overrate them. ■■■■■■■■■■