Wild Billy Childish and CTMF - Acorn Man

I've been out of the loop with the fifty-five-year-old since 2005's masterful Punk Rock at the British Legion Hall (recorded with the Musicians of the British Empire - same band, different name). He's always been there in the background, but that first MBEs album seemed like a decent place to catch my breath. So why did Acorn Man seem like the right place for me to jump back in? Well, I've been dying to discover something crude, something savage, something brutal. Something...Childish. And nobody does garage rock better.

Having missed the last ten years (and, presumably, forty-odd albums) of his career, the most striking thing about Acorn Man is the increased presence of Childish's long-time bassist Nurse Julie, whose endearing American twang provides a much-needed vocal foil to Wild Billy's commanding Estuary sneer. "Zero Emission" finds her casually dismissing "a stupid boy, so dumb and handsome," with all the care of throwing away a chewing gum wrapper, while the divebombing fury of "What Is This False Life You're Leading" is made all the more compelling by her Valley Girl-cum-Shangri-Las delivery, even when it takes a surreal turn into Dad's Army territory towards the end. Tracks like "He Wore a Pagan Robe" and "The Song of Myself" (a garage rock setting of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, no less) rattle along like instant (if unlikely) rock and roll classics. And even when the album stumbles - "Me or Mine" may rest on one recycled riff too many - the knowledge that most of these songs probably took less time to write than they did to play provides a strange comfort, allowing you to revel in the throwaway and relish the accidental greatness the record frequently offers up.

But all that is window dressing when stacked up against the album's centrepiece. Every now and again, Childish writes an anthem. Sometimes, as on "Troubled Mind", it's simply an infectious tune which comes out at the right time. At others, it's a straight-up tirade like "We Hate the Fuckin' NME" or "Art or Arse (You Be the Judge)" which sounds more like a broadside set to music. On "Punk Rock Enough for Me", Childish does both at once, and the results are incendiary. A manifesto for all things good and pure in music ("The Who before rock," "Billie Holliday and a piano" and "Joe Strummer and the 101'ers"), literature ("Dostoyevsky and Gogol...Knut Hamsun and John Fante") and lifestyle ("a cup of tea"), it bends the entire concept of punk rock into whatever shape Childish wants it to be. As the song's one bone-headed riff grinds on, Nurse Julie's backing vocals ("P. R. E. FM.") sound less like a garagey harmony than an ident for an imaginary radio station; the whole thing is nothing less than "Losing My Edge" without the irony - the concept of irony is, presumably, not punk enough for Childish.

So there it is. Another Billy Childish record - freewheelin', unhinged, intellectual, intense, mustachioed. It was ever thus. If, like me, you've fallen out of touch with Billy Childish, pick this up immediately. If you're a newbie, and you like your rock and roll with more spit than polish, if you like your tunings more out than in, if you think The Beatles sold out when they left Hamburg, Billy Childish And CTMF will be your new old saviours. Just don't think you'll ever be able to afford his entire discography.