Peter Perrett continues his immortal story with The Cleansing

Tantalising moments where artistic and commercial breakthroughs seem just a heartbeat away, appear enticingly on the horizon only to recede again in the rear-view mirror.

As the years rolled by, the unique brilliance of the Only Ones became increasingly undeniable but Perrett was never quite able to capitalise on the resulting critical goodwill.

It feels annoying to have to reference the many lost years, first to heroin then to crack, but his incredible late-life creative resurgence is hard to appreciate without acknowledging that history. In fact Perrett isn’t trying to deny the past as 20 track double album The Cleansing makes clear, but the joyous part of this story has to be the evidence of the ‘clean’ years that began in 2015.

Signing to Domino, Perrett has since delivered three of the best albums of his life which is of course saying a lot. The Cleansing follows 2019’s Humanworld, a record that brilliantly distilled everything great about his art. But now after a more than difficult COVID-challenged five years, The Cleansing’s bounteous treasure trove delivers his most ambitious and potentially most rewarding collection of songs.

Records awash with guests and bursting with so much music can turn out to be hubristic failures – but not The Cleansing. No, Perrett is far too canny and determinedly focussed on making up for lost time to let that happen.

So a role call of performers including Bobby Gillespie, Fontaines DC’s Carlos O’Connell, Johnny Marr and more, act not as focal points but rather integral elements of the songs they grace. The result is an extremely cohesive album that repeatedly shifts soundscapes, sometimes dramatically, elsewhere more subtly, and remains vital and engaging right through to the gloriously warm and ragged beauty of closer “Crystal Clear”, a song that sees Perrett accepting responsibility for choices made.

It’s the endpoint of a trip that begins with the invigorating twin guitar attack of the brilliantly mordant “I Wanna Go With Dignity” where Perrett sets out his stall with brutal musical and lyrical honesty and economy. Much missed music journalist David Cavanagh’s suicide (to whom the album has a shared dedication) provides a haunting focus for a song that examines life and death with a rare directness.

The Cleansing’s pace doesn’t leave room for restlessness. After the hurtling howl of “Disinfectant”, that sees Perrett wryly describe himself as, “a non-practising chemist, these days”, we hit the gorgeous romantic ache of “Fountain of You”, a timeless example of Perrett-style genius, only then to be wrong-footed by the uncomfortably strange lyrical twists and rockabilly swing of “Secret Taliban Wife”.

It’s this willingness to lead us down unfamiliar side streets (check the fuzzed-up, Moog and programmed drum-driven “Women Gone Bad” for evidence) then pull us back into a plangent, unmistakably Marr-assisted singalong like “Solitary Confinement” that ensures The Cleansing avoids the traps most double albums fall prey to. This time round there’s zero bloat and strictly no irritating interludes to spoil the flow.

On top of everything Perrett’s lyrical skill is razor-sharp, lurching from tender to vicious in the blink of an eye, it’s no coincidence that when Mojo magazine recently asked him to pick a few favourite songs the answer featured three Velvets, one Lou and two Dylan gems.

The Cleansing is the work of a man who dearly wants to make up for his wasted years, whose abilities remain entirely intact and who, most importantly, has reached a hard won emotional maturity that means he has a lot to say. That Peter Perrett says it so brilliantly is almost too good to be true, but true it is.