Search - Adverts :: Best of the Adverts

Useful primer on punk idealists

John L Murphy | Los Angeles | 09/11/2004

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Although the Adverts only wrote 26 songs, their work keeps being, lately, repackaged in various live and studio forms. Like the original-era Buzzcocks, the Pistols, or the Undertones, to name a few, there simply are not that many songs to go around. But for the fan, the subtle nuances of one version against the other open up appreciation for what can be done in a couple of minutes of what the uninitiated might dismiss as merely snarl.



I found this in a used bin last week; I rarely write record reviews anymore for Amazon, preferring to boost lesser-known books that seem to need more attention than whatever music I listen to does, given the invariable amount of already posted reviews when I check out bands and albums here. The Adverts' vinyl efforts had been nearly impossible to find even when I looked for them in the late 70s. The reissues on cd went out of print, it seemed, before I could grab any. What's more, I had Gary Gilmore's Eyes on a Dutch "new wave" (more like pub rock!) compilation back in 1978 and was sick of the song, although I liked its undeniable intelligence and delivery.



So, this Adverts overview, although a bit scattershot, jumping from early songs--can't tell if they are the single or the first album versions as tracks 2-11, and the remainder after being what seem like tracks from their much-maligned Cast of Thousands second and last lp, suffers from lack of notes on where these versions came from. I understand since hearing this that better anthologies now have been issued on Fire Records in 2003 with singer TV Smith's assistance, and I will shell over my cash for those duly.



But for a one-stop quick hop, this album did its duty, in getting me enthused about one of the last punk bands that I had not been able to fully hear on record the first time around. They remind me of the Buzzcocks as much as the Pistols or the Clash in their rapid-fire renditions, but as the record continues I could begin to sense their frustration with the limitations of punk's conformist sound and stance as commodity, and therefore the experimentation -- in turn reminiscent of both the ideas and the form of Howard Devoto's "Shot by Both Sides" post-Cocks single as he started Magazine. As with Penetration and Magazine, the later Adverts tried to break out of punk's restrictions. The results here sound tinny and way too ambitious for their budget or their abilities, but is touching and even thought-provoking in its true iconoclasm, on the later tracks survives as testament to their refusal to play the Ramones and bash out the same two chords for three decades. The only connection with the Ramones is the attempted Phil Spectorish production of some of the later songs, which brought derision for the Londoners at the time but now at least on the half of the out-of-print second album's tracks here gathered, sounds prescient. Self-referential but never reverential: true punks."