Play Dead - The First Flower
Jungle Freud 3
ON the fertile fringes of the positive punk outburst, Play Dead stand out courageously, delivering defiant, deadly and evocative messages. The banbury battalion demand your attention, they Whip up action; in fact, due to their strengths and mature vision, they’re capable of showing the whole shambolic movement a new route.
It’s a road less cluttered with pose, peppered extensively with purpose, with reasoning here as well as noise, and the naïve clone ramblings of less worthy outfits nearer to the movement’s nucleus are dumped at the starting gate. "The First Flower", a mid-price six-track mini-LP, is the ticket to advanced driving.
Turn it up load. Then louder. Listen. Are your speakers tearing themselves to shreds, or could it be your brain crumbling into fragments? There’s power here, that’s for certain. Feel the march of time, deliberate over the fool’s delight, and prepare for the last dance.
"Time", the opening cut, is the perfect backdrop to these peculiar feelings, its simple two-note bass run, majestic sustained guitar wash and pacey hi-hat trickery filling and fleshing out the mind. Query the lyric. Question your brain. Proceed.
"The Tenant" is even more damaging. The verse powers in with a dazzling, destructive dirge, while the hook is straightforward brute angst. Godammit! This is almost heavy metal! The tenant waits. I marvel at the simplicity and strength of it all.
What’s this? A fed-back guitar fades up mysteriously and then the Dead men rise up for a remixed, venomous, victorious version of "Propaganda". My single of the week shortly after Christmas, here "Propaganda" states its case even more violently, huge bellowing tom toms and abrasive, slicing guitars making the senses work overtime.
"The Flower" has budded, and as the shoot sprouts, eventually unfolding its precious persuasive petals, more magic is at work. "Sin of Sins" gives the set a rumbling, pulsing, pugnacious touch. "Don’t Leave Without Me" is not nearly as melodically distinctive, but nearly fits the deep, dark heady emotions that Play Dead bring to the fore.
"The First Flower" is a fine debut album, a virile vinyl statement that puts Play Dead on the map, way ahead of the rebellious ranting rabble. And the cheap mini-LP is a great idea - if "First Flower" does what "Seduction" did for Danse Society, then the Banbury boys should have a lot to smile about.
Investigate urgently.
Paul Strange
Play Dead "Company of Justice"
Red Rhino
THIS record did not want to be reviewed. Its stalwart refusal to leave its sleeve forced us to delicately remove the ugly thing with a blowtorch and surgical instruments recently borrowed from Guys when we went in to have our brains stopped. "Right, you bastard," we screamed as we slammed it down on the turntable.
"You sound like the Danse Society," we challenged. Unmoved it continued to revolve. "O.K., you sound like U2," we pointed accusingly. It persisted in its horribly irritating Clint Eastwood impersonation. "You think you’re a Banshees record." Unnerved by its confident defensiveness, we tentatively whispered "Bauhaus?" Nothing.
"When we can hear the lyrics, you sound like The Cult," we taunted. It cared not.
Unable to cope we headed for the door, bitching "Besides, you remind us of Duncan Goodhew." At that the vicious little twelve-incher skidded from the stereo, shot across the room and neatly embedded itself in the back of the guilty party’s thigh.
The Bed-Ridden Stud Brothers
Zig Zag, June 1984
Play Dead "From the Promised Land" (Clay LP)
The fact that this is a better LP (mini or otherwise) that their previous release is mainly down to the improved guitar work which lifts at least something out of the swamp.
Entitling the two sides as "From the Promised Land" and "The Fire Within" suggests something lays within the lyrics themselves as these have always been the weakest link on the Play Dead chain (often kept too far in back of the mix) the band themselves are the only ones privy to this information, but at least we can admire the cautious embellishment of dawdling tunes like "Isabel", "Return to the East", and "Walk Away". Play Dead have a semi-sour sound for virtually the whole of this album, little variety other than the guitar touches and a despairing case of the gloomies. Top heavy men, they lumber around in far saggier trousers than need be. A song like "No Motive" is not exactly lacking in ideas but has an arrangement that strangles any possibilities and the production throughout the record sheds a milky cloud over the music
What this kind of music requires is crystal clarity, otherwise their advances in simple songwriting are flushed away.
(sent by Melinda Williams)
Melody Maker, 9-24-1983
Play Dead: "Shine" (situation 2 12-inch)
WHEN people start to write off something as dead there's one thing you can be sure of: It ain't.
Rock, ie, a form of music characterized by a heavy "beat", played with electric guitars and drums, is supposed to have met its maker, yet occasionally something arrives, Zombie-like, to raise considerable doubts.
The appropriately named Play Dead lay down a slab of noise that doesn't tell us anything we haven't heard before, doesn't boast any particularly coruscating originality (the guitarist uses an unusual chord pulverized brilliantly by John Makay all the way through the Banshees' "The Scream", if you're interested in the technical evidence) yet still amounts to quasi-devastation.
It's good, very good indeed.
I'd Previously thought that Geordie's donner und blitzen attacks with Killing Joke were the epitome of metallic guitar, yet PD's string plucker makes a racket so fearsome that it's enough to have Joke running back to Iceland. Blimey! Rock (ahem) lives and stop pretending to be surprised. . .
(sent by Melinda Williams)
