Sham 69, Western Culture

Label: Bad Dog

Wot? No Jimmy Pursey? Their former frontman may have since become a new-age hippie, but there was an undeniable demotic punch to his lyrics that seared them into the memory.

Sadly, founding guitarist Dave Parsons, who has put together a new line-up, has no such gift: songs such as “I Don’t Believe A Word” and “Here Come The Lies” simply rehearse a vague scepticism in clangingly clichéd terms.

The bonehead anarchist attitude of “Give Me A Minute” appears to mistakenly assume that car industry workers actually want their companies to collapse, a bizarrely anachronistic Red Robbo mindset that turns out to be the most striking Seventies characteristic of the whole sorry album.

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