JULIAN COPE

Cope’s eco warning of our highway to hell, 25 years on.

By 1994, when Autogeddon was first released, Julian Cope’s transformation from leather-clad altidol to maverick on the margins was pretty much complete. Having recently been dropped by Virgin, this was Cope’s return to the fray, a bomb planted in the heart of a music scene dominated by the nostalgia of Britpop and the corporate noise of grunge. There may not have been that many people listening at the time, but his vision of a world heading towards eco-meltdown and a country being ruined by an uncaring establishment – all set to angry blasts of existential blues – sounds remarkably prescient today.

The title track sets out Cope’s stall right from the start, sombrely intoning that ‘My waking dream won’t go away’: motorway service stations as the new cities, the countryside ring-fenced by the landed gentry. With a growl of guitar, he fantasises about murdering The Man (in a 4x4), and with a wet peal of VCS3 – it’s Hawkwind at Stonehenge and the

Battle Of The Beanfield all over again.

For all these homicidal imaginings, hippie pacifism turned militant, Cope still has a fine way with a tune. The folky, pastoral psychedelia of Madmax and Don’t Call Me Mark Chapman might be stripped down in comparison to previous recordings, but there’s some nice wandering fretwork and reedy organ adding colour. The album’s highlight is the three-part Paranormal In The West Country, the sound of Cope reinventing himself on the fly over a hooky acoustic riff, retreating from urban life and

‘the in-bred Buckingham Palace scum.’ The final part is an intriguing piece of discordant prog psych – he might be a man at odds with the times, but this sounds a lot like OK Computer-era Radiohead. The 11-and-a-half-minute s.t.a.r.c.a.r. brings the album to a close in cosmic style, with drifting guitar slowly gathering steam over the whoosh of space, Cope beginning his journey from cussed English eccentric to alternative national treasure.