1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 418. X-Ray Spex – Germfree Adolescents (1978)

 

Although I’ve long heard of X-Ray Spex, and Poly Styrene, I wasn’t sure if I’d ever heard any of their songs; however, I have heard the title track of this album, a glorious semi-robotic chant about a sterile society where “You may get to touch her, if your gloves are sterilized. Rinse your mouth with Listerine, blow disinfectant in her eyes”, and probably the most New Wave track on here.

Styrene (real name Marianne Elliott-Said), mixed Scottish-Somali wild child has a voice that’s equal parts Little Eva and Janis Joplin – girlish and fierce at the same time, and along with Rudi Thomson’s sax really defines the X-Ray Spex sound, by parts hard punk (Identity or I Live Off You), sometimes veering into Sixties girl-pop (I Can’t Do Anything).

Styrene’s lyrics take aim at mindless consumerism (with frequent references to trademarks like Gibbs SR toothpaste or Weetabix), especially the disposability of both consumer goods and culture in Plastic Bag. People are commodities or drones, such as in Arti-I-Ficial and Genetic Engineering, lured into a vacuous celebrity culture where “My facade is just a fake, shock, horror no escape. Sensationalism for the feed, caricatures are what you breed”
How things have changed.

While Patti Smith may have paved the way for women to be more chaotic in music, X-Ray Spex, and Poly Styrene in particular, really seem to have set the example followed by the likes of Bikini Kill and Back To The Planet, perhaps arguably The Go-Gos and The Pipettes. As post-punk tunes, they’re nothing particularly out of the ordinary, it’s the lead singer that really makes them different.