A belated sequel to the 2006 collection Never Mind the S*x P*stols, Here's the Bollocks, this disc offers up 13 tunes from the archives of Step Forward and Illegal Records, the independent punk/new wave labels run by Miles Copeland before he launched I.R.S. Records and guided
the Police and
the Go-Go's to global stardom. While many of the best moments from the Copeland vaults were used up on the first volume, there are plenty of gems here:
Sham 69's "Borstal Breakout" is one of the group's absolute finest moments, and roughly the same can be said of the Cortinas' "Defiant Pose."
Squeeze's "Monkey" is one of the band's lesser early tracks, but it shows that the
Tilbrook/
Difford songwriting team already had talent to spare. Mark Perry's "Snappy Turns" could pass for lo-fi before the genre truly came into being. "Ain't That a Shame" is an engaging solo number from former
Damned man Brian James, and the selections from Menace, the Gonads, and
the Business prove that even second-string (or third-string) U.K. punk bands are capable of throwing together a good yell-along number under the right circumstances.
Never Mind the S*x P*stols, Here's the Bollocks, Vol. 2! isn't quite up to the standards of the original, but there's still plenty of fun old-school ranting here, and if you have a taste for semi-rarities from the U.K. punk-and-related-phenomena scene, this should be right up your alley. ~ Mark Deming