Vic Godard, The End of the Surrey People
Featured Album
The sound of someone who's seen a lot and has had some time to reflect on it
In 1976, Vic Godard was the leader of one of the first British punk rock bands, Subway Sect. Over the next few years, though, he drifted away from punk and developed a taste for American soul and Cole Porter, then quit music in the mid-’80s. He returned to songwriting and recording with this album, released in 1993 (and recorded by his old scenemate Edwyn Collins, on an eight-track machine in his bedroom). It’s a look back at punk as a music of misfits, from a musician who didn’t even fit in with that scene. Godard never really had a shouter’s voice, and several decades on it’s become a reedy, conversational, distinctly un-punk tenor, nicely accompanied here with sinuous lead guitar and a crisp rhythm section: this is the sound of someone who’s seen a lot and has had some time to reflect on it. It’s an impressively varied, thoughtful set–over the course of the album, Godard resurrects an old Subway Sect instrumental (“Imbalance”), eulogizes the New York Dolls’ Johnny Thunders, and imagines the crumbling of Yugoslavia transplanted to England (on the title track). Best of all is “Won’t Turn Back,” a tribute to Northern soul that Collins later covered himself.
