407. Public Image Ltd. - Public Image (a.k.a. First Issue) (1978)
















Track Listing

1. Theme
2. Religion 1
3. Religion 2
4. Annalisa
5. Public Image
6. Low Life
7. Attack
8. Fodderstompf

Review

So the Sex Pistols are dead, good riddance, no one needed them, except for McLaren's pocket. Now Johnny Rotten moved his interest to a more avant-garde area with PiL and what a good thing he did too. This album is light years away from the Pistols, it is interesting, innovative, fun and pretty great.

Of course the album has its problems, Rotten's philosophising in the second track are actually painful in how adolescent they feel. I was like that myself, when I was 15, writing angry bad poetry with more than obvious meaning and poor rhyming. Oh well, that vocal track is followed by a not bad track with the same lyrics together with music, which hide the amateurish quality of the poetry.

Then there are a couple of really amazing highlights to this album, the first is the famous title track, which sounds like completely developed post-punk and the other one is the last track Fodderstompf, which sounds more like the 90's than the 70's in it's electronic dance feel with some pretty funny lyrics which might sound annoying at first but soon sink in... to the point that my wife has spent the last couple of days singing 'I only wanted to be loved'. Two Thumbs up.

Track Highlights

1. Fodderstompf
2. Public Image
3. Theme
4. Annalisa

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

First Issue is described by critics of that time, and even by some of the band members, as a mostly effortless recording, because of the pressure given by the record company. Though most of the songs resemble to some extent the familiar punk sound of the Sex Pistols, it also explored experimental genres, such as dub music and Krautrock. Despite its contemporary criticism, First Issue was well received by the fans of Public Image Ltd. and seen in hindsight to have been a ground-breaking and artistically successful work.

In March 2005, Q magazine placed the song "Public Image" at number 45 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. In this article, it was also claimed that the album had been used by psychiatrists in the treatment of depressive patients to show them that they were not alone

Public Image: