Albums of the Year # 30 CTMF - Brand New Cage

What I wrote at the beginning of November:

'Probably not an album that'll feature in many end of 2017 lists of records of the year. But it will certainly be in mine. CTMF,  one of Billy Childish's many recurrent projects, released their latest album a few weeks back and it's a must hear. Classic British Punk Rock in its truest sense, forty years after the original event. 

The reason it won't figure in other lists is probably partially because Childish is the man behind it. After all, he's churned out any number of fairly similar sounding records over the last forty years. Along with books, poems, paintings, films and pretty much everything else. Nothing if not prolific. But this is no reason for this album, Brand New Cage, not to be judged on its own merits. And it's a very fine thing indeed.

Estuary English Punk in the grand tradition of Subway Sect, Television Personalities, Swell Maps, ATV and Childish himself, it tells of the pre-story, story and legacy of 1977. With a photo booth snapshot of Childish at nineteen on its cover, it's twelve tracks of rattling guitar driven Rock & Roll of British literary and literate ranting and testimony. Social history with good tunes.

I heard the riffs of Substitute, That's All I Know Right Now, (Neon Boys) and Gloria lifted without a hint of regret. Plenty more has been pilfered for sure but it's of no matter. Childish works fast and this 'self-aware retroism' is the end result. If bits of it sound slapdash that's exactly as it should and is meant to be. What I think he's saying is that the emotions and energy of those distant days of Punks first explosion are as relevant now as they were then. They still live in the veins and souls of those who experienced them first time round and still sense and are fuelled by the same vigour on the streets of Chatham, (Childish's home town) and other dead end satellite towns that Punk electrified and that were destined never to be quite the same, ever again. 

The jewel in the crown of the record is What About Brian, a tale of Childish and friends changing trains at Dartford Station to spot the plaque to Mick and Keith who famously met there but which fails to mention Brian Jones, (who after all formed the Rolling Stones but didn't live to tell the tale), and their subsequent rant as the train pulls away from its platform.  Several other tracks are barely a length behind. Every one tells a tale worth telling. Brand New Cage is a brand new friend.'