Wild Billy Childish & The Spartan Dreggs

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3...according to our Phil on Wed 28 Sep, 2011.

If you're still reading then Billy Childish has a new album out under a new moniker. A man who's clearly happy with change as he knows when it's time to move onto a “new band”. The same can't be said for his music though which hasn't really undergone any change at all in the 30 odd years he's been making music. The Spartan Dreggs were forged from the line up of the Vermin Poets (they are effectively the same band with a different name) and I can't really tell the difference between the 2 bands to be honest. Hey if you're a Billy fan then you know what you're getting. I'm still firmly wedged in the Headcoats / Mighty Caesars era which was his strongest in my opinion and the new material he's released since has re-trod old ground. If you're into 60's style garage punk rock then you'll love it though nd if you've not heard any Billy Childish before (which is entirely possible) then this is as good as any place to start. Though if I were you I'd check out the Thee Mighty Caesars comp 'Surely They Were The Sons of God' which fuckin' rules.

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Here be the Spartan Dreggs, Billy Chydish’s new ensemble. The Spartan Dreggs sank from the scum of the Vermin Poets — but kept the same line-up and similar songs. Once more Chydish drives from the back seat, playing tug-boat bass guitar. Wolf, of course, is playing the drum set and lead voice and guitar are supplied by the excellent Neil Palmer. Nurse Julie, with babe in arms, offers up harmony. The Spartan Dreggs, as story has it, were left as newborns to die upon a wintry fen — then spirited away by the Gods to entertain the immortals, singing epics for the tired Muses to hum by death’s door. These hymns took on a life of their own, thereby raising the suspicion of Hermes, Athena and several other deities, that they might inspire humankind to invent their own stories beyond those dreamed up by the far-seeing Olympians. So The Spartan Dreggs were cast back into this earthen mold. DO I UNDERSTAND WHAT THE SPARTAN DREGGS BE? If you can imagine the Vermin Poets as a beachcomber’s shack assembled out of driftwood on a sand bar adjoining an intertidal marshland, then the Spartan Dreggs be made of the exact same tarpaulin and logs, but dragged up on to higher land and reassembled, with the addition of a veranda made out of a washed-up canoe. In a very real sense this all-new group is the opposite of ‘my grandfather’s axe.’ And so, disguised in Saxon garb, the Spartan Dreggs live to strike the trembling lyre of life! DO I KNOW WHAT THE SPARTAN DREGGS SOUND LIKE? Like a small child who has just said the best thing that’s ever been said, but no one is listening, so do the Spartan Dreggs proclaim their songs. But there is still a sense that no one will ever harken to this new-found choir, heard for the first and last time in a stricken world. Nevertheless, the Spartan Dreggs utter song and sooth for all. Signed: The Dreggs of Yore. “And then the Thunderer rested and the words fell out his ears!”

Tracklist:

1/Forensic R'n'B

2/The Ocean River Runs Around The Edge
3/Tower Block
4/And Darkness Engulfed His Eyes
5/The Physics Of Blown Sand And Desert Dunes
6/The Fighting Tameraire
7/Our Strange Power Of Speech
8/Intertidal Marshland
9/The Charcoal Burners Lament
10/ Pegasus Bridge
11/A Dismembered Book Of Myself
12/Scout-a-boo
13/Are You A Wally? (Or Are You A Smooth?)
14/Paeleo Punk

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