Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
A particular school of thought always maintains, insists and is arguably right, that an album created does not have to conform to fashion, blinkered style or persistent convention; it is what the Punk ethic strove for, to prove that anybody could achieve anything if they had the ethos of passion, drive and someone to listen to them perform. It is drive that sets the way, without it, you may as well sit at home and just talk about doing stuff, placing your life on permanent hold, doing nothing and wishing you had at least, just once put your thoughts down in a Punk style.
The Bordellos are more than just Punk, they have the same drive, the same fascination with the realm as a whole and not a vision content with the minor and trivial, but they do go one step beyond this dynamic foresight. They seem to embrace the punishing schedule that comes with stream of consciousness, the unrefined and revolutionary approach of writing something and then sticking to it, not changing the meaning, the angst or the drama in any shape of form; why appease those that were never going to listen anyway when you can take the thoughts of those who were even further. It is a statement of intent that has always worked well for The Bordellos and perhaps never more so than on their opus Debt Sounds.
An album that does not compromise at all, is like finding out just how much the great 17th and 18th Century poets were willing to place and stress their contempt for the modern society, to be the ones who were mad, bad and dangerous to know and Debt Sounds, in all its tangled webs and weaved through gears of emotion, in all the facts of recording that went behind the songs, are just as persuasive as finding a lost rant written by Byron about the joys of swimming with naked men in the Aegean.
The strictness of the recording session, one take only, if it messes up then it stays in regardless, tracks only written that week, all sorts of enveloping drama and the relinquishing of inhibition, make Debt Sounds a set of songs that truly feel human.
With tracks such as Fading Honey, Rolf Harris, She’s My Artform, Dead Friends Don’t Leave Me Hanging, New York Girl and Honeypie all making dramatic headway into the ether and the close encounters with overriding drive, The Bordellos early outings should be considered as an ethical stance that, whilst the upturned nose brigade would find out of their class range, nevertheless is a fruitful, imaginative way of setting down your thoughts and carrying them through with passion.
A gift of a find, a Bordellos farsighted glory.
Ian D. Hall