The Prefects
★★★★ Going Through The Motions CALL OF THE VOID. LP
First time on vinyl for Birmingham punks’ late-’70s catalogue. “PERFECTION IS a fault,” declared The Prefects on an early handbill, and their 1978/79 John Peel sessions embodied the sound of ambition outstripping ability that made the late ’70s so exciting. The opener, Going Through The Motions, sets out their stall: beginning in parody blues, it resolves into a rumbling Velvets drone while singer Rob Lloyd dissects and dissolves the performer/audience contract. Barbarella’s, meanwhile, deconstructs Birmingham’s premier punk club (“See the toilets/Hear The Prefects”) in a brutally brief thrash. The Prefects sang about the muck and dirt of everyday lives, including their own as communicators learning on the job. Yet they saw beyond things in general. Escort Girls does not judge, but empathises. Bristol Road Leads To Dachau is a 10-minute grind through the horror of the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings. Passed around on second and third generation cassettes, these eight songs (augmented by three live cuts) were an initiation into a secret sect – the outer limits of punk possibility. It’s great to have them on long-player.