With Gang Of Four being breathlessly invoked by a fresh crop of new bands, including many who don't sound even remotely like Gang Of Four, overdue revisits to their back catalogue continue apace. Solid Gold catches them at their furious finest, shuffling between the personal politics of consumption and longing ("What We All Want") with broader assaults on, for example, US cultural hegemony ("Cheeseburger") and the continuing asset-stripping project of Thatcherism. This is worth owning if only for "History's Bunk", a former B-side with incontinent guitar flamethrowing that demonstrates, like PiL, that punk and fretboard excess weren't incompatible.
With Gang Of Four being breathlessly invoked by a fresh crop of new bands, including many who don’t sound even remotely like Gang Of Four, overdue revisits to their back catalogue continue apace. Solid Gold catches them at their furious finest, shuffling between the personal politics of consumption and longing (“What We All Want”) with broader assaults on, for example, US cultural hegemony (“Cheeseburger”) and the continuing asset-stripping project of Thatcherism. This is worth owning if only for “History’s Bunk”, a former B-side with incontinent guitar flamethrowing that demonstrates, like PiL, that punk and fretboard excess weren’t incompatible.
