Thatcher's Children

Album Review

Depending on which album you pick up, Billy Childish is either up for a noisy, beer-sodden good time or he has a message (usually angry) to pass along, but on Thatcher's Children, we get a bit of both from the U.K.'s potentate of garage rock. The album opens with the title song, a withering screed against the way punk rock has been co-opted by the larger corporate culture and how what passed for extreme conservatism in the political scene of the '70s and '80s seems quaintly mainstream today. It's far and away the most political and rabble-rousing number on the album, but Childish & the MBEs (Nurse Julie on bass and Wolf Howard on drums) aren't afraid to look to the darker side of their musical personality on "Again and Again" and "I'm Depressed," and explore the more serious side of relationships wit " An Image of You" and "I Fill All of Your Dreams," though rocking out is clearly the priority on tunes like "Little Miss Contrary," "Coffee Date," and "He's Making a Tape" (the latter two being idiosyncratic meditations on infidelity among Medway hipsters). As on Childish's other sessions with the MBEs, he shows no fear of creatively borrowing melodic figures from other acts, and hooks from the Clash, the Who, the Kinks, and even Joan Jett are visible in a number of these tunes, though in context it doesn't sound like plagiarism but sincere homage. And while there's no small amount of sweaty enthusiasm and grit on Thatcher's Children, the production and engineering is clean and well-detailed by Childish's standards. Outside of the blistering title song, Thatcher's Children is a fairly average Billy Childish album, but that means it still rocks hard and delivers your minimum daily requirement of slashing guitar and pounding drums, so if you're any kind of fan you'll want to give it a listen.