Peter Perrett - Humanworld

The Guardian 80

(Domino)
After years lost to addiction, Perrett’s second album since 2017 shows his well-judged musical ideas continue to flourish

One comeback album – 2017’s How the West Was Won – was surprising enough.

That a second album has come out two years later, making this Peter Perrett’s most productive period since 1978-80, when the Only Ones released their three records, is little short of miraculous. Maybe all the years lost to heroin and crack have been kind to Perrett in one sense; perhaps the missing decades meant he didn’t use up all his best musical ideas in one flush of talent. Humanworld isn’t just good by the standards of albums made by people who spent years on hard drugs, or by the standards of late career revivals: it’s simply a very good album indeed.

Fri Jun 07 09:00:06 GMT 2019

The Guardian 80

(Domino)

Given his notoriously ruinous lifestyle, Peter Perrett’s 2017 solo debut, How the West Was Won, was a remarkably coherent record. Almost four decades after the Only Ones’ acrimonious dissolution, finally clean after years of heroin and crack addiction, and backed by his sons Jamie (guitar) and Peter Jr (bass), Perrett showed he still had a way with a drawled melody, even if his ruminations on Kim Kardashian’s bottom seemed a little unnecessary.

The follow-up is even better, delivered with a greater confidence and urgency, and featuring a handful of songs that almost match up to his late-70s output. The title of the thrillingly direct War Plan Red might be a reference to a 1930 US military plan to attack British interests in the North Atlantic, but when Perrett sings, “The stars and stripes and swastikas filled Madison Square Garden”, it seems more like a snapshot from a dystopian near-future. The mid-paced Master of Destruction, written by his son Jamie and containing the album’s most potent chorus, is stronger still. He’s equally adept on the slower material: Heavenly Day showcases his more romantic side, while Believe in Nothing is heroically nihilistic (“Blackest hole is drawing us in/Bleakest future there’s ever been”).

Sun Jun 09 07:00:24 GMT 2019