Original “punk.” Tatty, torpid mugs, and the methodically skewed guitar crunch and oil drum they’d rather keep as evocatively nude and elucidated as the titles themselves. Injection kid, tw-Iggy Pop, and the motorstate chain gang from Rock ‘n’ Roll High School get bed-wet and expelled: Don’t wanna learn no prog, so they do it their way — primal untaught, but still taut and “No Fun”; b-b-b-boner-think-on-the-brink, pushed back, not over, by Cale’s sleek, too-defined production. And his violameister’s influence on “We Will Fall,” the practically unlistenable ouija board creak, is a chink in the album’s animal-trash hook. Not as downright spry as later efforts.
Rating: A
