Sole survivor

The Only Ones auteur returns with his first new music in over 20 years.

Apart from a fleeting Only Ones reunion in 2007/8, this anachronistic new wave-era auteur of Velvets-y subterranean romantic classics such as the immortal Another Girl, Another Planet has been entirely AWOL for 20 years. As revealed in MOJO 284 last month, Perrett ended an adult lifetime of junkiedom in 2012, and at the behest of his ailing wife and co-conspirator, Xena, picked up the thread of his flamboyant songwriting genius to make this comeback record, with help from his two sons (and sometime Babyshamblers), guitarist Jamie and Peter Jr (on bass). Beyond ribald, his first official composition in a full two decades, since 1996’s out-of-time solo record Woke Up Sticky (released as The One), is partially, of all things, a love letter to Kim Kardashian: the opening title track tackles no lesser issue than America, from the viewpoint of a lifelong rocker forever enamoured of its guitarslinging cultural heroes, like Lou Reed, Bob Dylan et al. It rolls in on a gentle Sweet Jane/Vicious riff, with Perrett ruminating in an astonishingly unspoilt Lou drawl, about the gradual erosion of American notions of Liberty (“the Indians and Mexicans were the first to feel the rope”), before suddenly left-turning to confess his obsession with Kanye West’s media-saturating spouse, who, he confides, “has taken over from J-Lo as my Number 1”. He makes no bones about his reasons (“she’s just a bum”); she appears here as a cypher for all that’s trashy, sexy and alluring to our Transatlantic gaze. “God knows, I love America,” Perrett confirms, following up with a wonderfully patriotic electric guitar solo tribute to the Land of the Free, but then ploughing into its contradictory belief in freedom, but with a “head on the spike of a gun/It’s no mystery, it’s your history/It’s what you’ve always done” – extra chilling, in the dawning of Trumpite isolationism. Albeit prehistoric in its gender politics, the song reintroduces our hero, now 65, as a lyricist of supreme dexterity, wit and selfawareness (after all, The Only Ones failed to win the West, blowing apart after a disastrous US tour supporting The Who); thus immediately dispelling fears that this reactivation will be all about gruesome exposés of the depths to which Perrett sank in absentia. As the album proceeds, its warmth, humour and starry-eyed romance always override its everpresent undertow of fatalism and

“THE ALBUM’S WARMTH, HUMOUR AND STARRYEYED ROMANCE OVERRIDES ITS UNDERTOW OF FATALISM.”

sudden, post-narcotic mortal worry. Second up, An Epic Story is a beautiful and triumphant love song for Xena, its entries in the minus column doubtless harsher than most will experience (“it’s too late for repentance of sins”), but its croakily soaring chorus – “I’ll always be your man… if I could live my whole life again, I’d choose you” – every time lifting your spirits with its underdog dreamer’s guilelessness. If not quite comparable with Another Girl…’s pulse-quickening rush, this could rightfully serve as his follow-up radio hit, a mere 39 years later. Across the remainder of How The West Was Won, his songwriterly finesse rarely flags. Much of it plays out at the cryogenic tempo of The Whole Of The Law, opener from ’78’s The Only Ones. You duly find yourself hanging on his every word, often in the wake of killer opening lines such as “Sometimes I find it hard to say no” (Hard To Say No), “Sitting in my cell, I’m not alone” (Living In My Head), and “Just like the experiment with the rat… he could choose food, or he could choose crack” (Something In My Brain). Inevitably, given Perrett’s death’s-door appearance when last sighted in 2008, our knowledge of his misspent life hangs spectrally over the whole album – a hidden ingredient he deploys, like a master storyteller, to enrich his lyrics. In the spirit of Another Girl…’s “you get under my skin” love/drugs ambivalence, the chilling C Voyeurger finds him searching crowds for his babe’s face – “Time is frozen just waiting for the day she’ll be here” – but you can’t help feeling that the song’s mood of forlorn suspended animation is at least indirectly informed by an addict’s need for his fix. The subject is only formally broached towards the end, on the oddly jaunty Something In My Brain. Readers should be advised that only here – and probably only ever here – have rats been offered crack. “The rat, he starved to death,” Perrett quickly deadpans, “but I didn’t die…at least not yet…I’m still just about capable”. The something in his brain, he avers, is a defiance that’s kicked in during his twilight years. He gives us a quick glimpse of the rats who chose unwisely, “all covered in blisters”, and of himself brutally conquered by “a man with scary eyes and syringe tattoos”, but, he says, “Just then a train of thought stopped at a station, and I got off.” Then, something better took over. “This is an allegorical tale,” he summarises, rockin’ outlaw to the last, “but don’t take prisoners, don’t get bail!” To hear Perrett, the great lost British star of the ’70s, fighting back in this robust condition is beyond all rational expectation. In the bigger picture, How The West Was Won makes a highly persuasive case for an artist’s pursuit of gonzo rock into their sexagenarian years, with so much experience, both existentially and technically, to draw from. In the hands of an under-recorded lifer like Perrett, such procedure feels fresh, vital, and gloriously unapologetic, resulting in a consummately composed lesson in narrative songcraft, which tugs on the heartstrings as it sails off into the sunset with Take Me Home. “So, rock’s got into me – oh yeah!” he repeats, like a sarcastic evangelist, at Something In My Brain’s climax. Oh yeah, indeed.