Search - Mighty Wah :: Word to the Wise Guy

"God gave us this leisure to enjoy"

A. J. Griffiths | 07/17/2002

(5 out of 5 stars)

"...is the motto of the city of Liverpool. A city which, in 1984 when this record was made, was having unwanted leisure time forced upon it in the form of mass unemployment as well as suffering seamingly terminal urban decay, riots and industrial strife, all of which galvanised a face-off between the left-wing city council and Thatcher's centralised rate-cappers. Out of all this emerged one of the most remarkable records of its era. Helplessness and defiance, frustration and rage, bitterness and, ultimately, optimism and reaffirmation are all here in a concept album which has reality and truth at its heart instead of wizards, elves and dragons. Pete Wylie, once described as the second greatest songwriter to come out of liverpool, commited commercial - but not artistic - suicide with these truely political songs. "Weekends" eloquently observes the irony of having leisure time but no means to enjoy it, "The Lost Generation" is a rallying cry for the dispossessed of the "Me" decade, "I Know there was Something" dips into the crushing inertia of a failing relationship, while "Come Back" somehow manages to mix anger, defiance, motown, hope, guitars and self-belief in the most thrilling of ways. All this interwoven with Eugene Lange's vitriolic scouse proto-rap rants. Strummer and Jones, Weller, Dammers and Bragg cannot touch this record. Magnificent."