Peter Perrett: The Cleansing (digital outlets)

Peter Perrett's post-punk band The Only Ones had no greater champion in this country than the late Dr Rock, Barry Jenkin.

But then again, after a conversion worthy of St Paul, he fell hard for the new sounds like Teenage Kicks by the Undertones and most things by the Buzzcocks.

But he did always seem quite smitten by Another Girl Another Planet.  

Opening with a surging energy, a searing guitar part (solos unfashionable in the hardcore punk world) and Perrett's bored “I always flirt with death, I look ill but I don't care about it” the song had a transcendent quality.

Another Girl, Another Planet

With that classic single straddling tough pop and emerging punk/New Wave, The Only Ones earned an entry in The Great Book of Rock.

Their 1978 self-titled debut album included other fine songs and serious musicianship when untutored amateurism was the norm in Britain. But many didn't hear much more than that single from Perrett's band which broke up in 1982.

Perrett's career-killing addiction meant intermittent recording and appearances over four decades, but this new album – under a heavily freighted title – opens with the raw I Wanna Go With Dignity (“don't wanna overstay my welcome”) and brings his Lou Reed flattened delivery to Fountain of You, the memorably dismissive World in Chains and the pivotally autobiographical All That Time ruefully noting “at the time it felt like fun . . . just another wasted life”.

As with the Libertines' Pete Doherty whose talent was also blunted and broken by addiction, Perrett writes with a wide reach.

Here are the John Cale-like stomp of Secret Taliban Wife (“sending me videos on WhatsApp”), the gloomy Kill a Franco Spy (“with my bare hands”) and Art is a Disease: “You can serve a life sentence if you're convicted”.

This ends with Crystal Clear: “You got to own the choices you made. You thought you'd teach them all a lesson, but it seems you weren't that clever. A big mistake, by your own admission . . . the chamber is clear but they keep feeding you ammunition”. 

With Primal Scream's Bobby Gillespie, Johnny Marr, Carlos O'Connell (Fontaines DC's), and his sons Peter Jnr and Jamie for this double album, the 72 year old Perrett might say “I got no voice, can't even scream” (Back in the Hole) but he addresses a troubled past and disturbing visions with deadpan clarity.

You can hear and buy this album at bandcamp here