Well 1978 isn’t giving up easily. I thought we could expect some antagonistic stuff from John Lydon, and that’s what happens here for his first post-Sex Pistols project. Along with Keith Levene, formerly of The Clash, bassist Jah Wobble and drummer Jim Walker, Lydon creates some dark post-punk tracks of lengthy beats not unlike krautrock.
The opening track, Theme, is a nine-minute Velvet Underground kind of ongoing rocky drone, over which (or under which, the mix is low) Lydon screams “I want to diiiiiieee!”. The track Religion, broken into two parts, one of which is more like the lyrics as a poem, is a bit more simplistic. It was probably shocking at the time, nowadays (unless you’re in certain parts of the USA) it’s pretty much the norm. Annalisa continues this theme, a song about a 15-year old girl starved to death by her parents because they think she’s possessed by a demon.
Side Two is more about fame, with Lydon railing against how he was used as the Public Image for the Sex Pistols, and Low Life being an attack on, perhaps Malcolm McClaren, perhaps Sid Vicious, as a “bourgeoise anarchist”.
The final track is an early piece of dubstep, composed by Jah Wobble, another lengthy piece with a more dancy beat to it, with the vocals (Wobble in this case) a kind of falsetto screech that “We only want to be loved”.
There’s definitely something to this album that hints at musical directions to come, like a rough draft for dub-step, for shoegazing, and for noise rock. Because it’s that kind of precursor rather than fully honed, and perhaps because the album was made quickly (the engineer says he was left with what he thought was the rough takes to create a final product), it feels a little like it’s neither one thing nor another. There are some great tracks on here, however, especially Theme.
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