Music Arcades: Public Image Ltd: Greatest Hits, So Far

Here's another artefact of a bygone age of music buying. I already had the first five tracks by way of first album and Metal Box.I guess I bought this (a) because it was a fiver from Fopp and (b) because I liked This is Not a Love Song and Rise and was a little curious to see what PIL had come up with since those records.

Nowadays £1.58 would have got be the songs I liked but didn't have and 25 minutes on Last.fm or imeem would have told me that the later stuff did not reward curiosity.

Having said that, it is curious how and why the later stuff is so unprepossessing. I get the feeling that John Lydon had lost his nerve. How else to explain the massed voices of female backing singers — OK for Van Morrison, but for PIL? It's undistinguished American FM rawk music, which seems to be trying to sound big, though it just ends up being lumpy. Is his voice too thin? Is it that he's got nothing to say? Then I realised that I wasn't listening to what he had to say, I wasn't being drawn in. I concentrated for a bit on Don't Ask Me. I don't recommend repeating this experiment.

And as for that optimistic So Far in the album title…