Released 09.11.09 (Year Zero)


Of all the great bands to emerge from the original punk explosion, X-Ray Spex stand as one of a special few – The Slits, The Raincoats, The Rezillos - who have not been repacked and mythologized into sepia-tinged irrelevance. The air raid siren howl unleashed by singer Poly Styrene on debut single ‘Oh Bondage! Up Yours’ personified the explosive liberation punk symbolised for kids across the late-70s UK, liberation from every kind of bondage – historical, sexual, racial, political. More than 30 years later, that song still sounds like the purest, most elemental expression of rebellion at any cost. There’s just nothing in the lexicon of British pop that can touch it. 

So can X-Ray Spex (original members Styrene and bassist Paul Dean, plus their mates) still embody that spirit of liberation in the flesh decades later? Well no, of course not, and it would hateful for us to expect them to. This live CD/DVD release of X-Ray Spex’s sell out gig at London’s Roundhouse on September 6 2008 finds them older, less wild and looking sometimes slightly unsure of the deathless punk noise they created. The adrenalin rush of ‘I’m a Cliché’ gets away from them quite badly until, through visible effort, they claw it back in the song’s second half.  Poly, who as a teenage girl combined fierce intelligence, anti-fashion genius and loveable gaucheness, is now a demure, slightly mumsy figure. She looks very much like Rebecca Front’s perpetually put upon minister in The Thick of It. On faster songs such as ‘I’m a Poser’, she fleetingly looks like she has no idea what she is doing up onstage bashing out this stuff. Her stage patter is also somewhat stilted, limited to some brief exchanges. But the love coming from the crowd is enormous, almost tangible, and invests Poly’s every brief utterance with emotional charge.  

If you love X-Ray Spex – and if not, why do you bother having ears? – it’s impossible to watch this woman without feeling love and pride swell in your heart. Poly remains an icon for many reasons. She has faced hardship – after enduring the isolation of being a mixed race girl raised by a single mother in 60s and 70s Britain, she found release through X-Ray Spex but saw the band disintegrate after she was sectioned and misdiagnosed with schizophrenia. She subsequently spent a long time on the wrong medication before eventually being correctly diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. There’s also the wit and insight of her lyrics, many of which seem all the more pertinent now: we’re all living with the consequences of a world turned day-glo; ‘Warrior in Woolworths’ is imbued with a new poignancy, while ‘Identity’, with its lacerating lyrics (‘Did you did for the fame/ did you do it in a fit/ did you do it before you read about it?’) has never sounded so right about the worrying headspace of the fame hungry. All three songs are performed here and all three sound incredible.  

Poly recently stated in an interview with Record Collector magazine that she is unlikely to perform live again as she does not feel up to it. That is achingly sad. Unfortunately – as wonderful a night as it evidently was for those who attended – it would be a stretch to say this gig stands as a fitting testament to her live career. But it does serve as a timely reminder that here is a woman who was brave, smart and (in a good way) crazy enough to rip a new space in pop music for beautiful misfits and mis-shapes with something to say and an arresting way of saying it. We are all living with her legacy.  

Posted In Album Reviews, Nov 12 2009. Words - Richard