About time we left the USA for a while and visited Iceland again. Literally. Because this version of ‘Popplagio’ was recorded live in Iceland and is part of the exquisite ‘Heima’ film of Sigur Ros’s 2006 tour of their homeland.

Like practically all of Sigur Ros’s songs, ‘Popplagio’ is sung in Hopelandic, a language they make up as they go along but which is loosely based on Icelandic (see ABON 0040).

And like on most other Sigur tracks, here Jonsi uses his lyrics and vocals more as sound than words, communicating through feel and tone rather than vocabulary. How successful he is at this is demonstrated by the fact that he can borrow words and whole phrases from other Sigur tracks, that you’ve heard before, often several times before, yet manage to make them convey something completely different on this occasion. And on this occasion that something different eventuually becomes more terrifying angel of the apocalypse than the angel of salvation he more commonly suggests.

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Public Image Limited Part 3.

When guitarist, Keith Levene (I think) said that ‘Flowers Of Romance’ was “probably the least commercial album ever delivered to a record company” he was wrong. But ‘Flowers’ is difficult, even by PIL standards.

Apart from John Lydon’s lyrics and unique vocals the stand-out features of the first two PIL albums were Jah Wobble’s Dub-inspired heavy-as-lead bass and Keith Levene’s sharper-than-a-jagged-piece-of-metal guitar.

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If Public Image Limited’s first album (see ABON 0134) helped kick start the Post Punk phenomenon, then their second album, ‘Metal Box’, demonstrated at length and in depth how rich a territory Post Punk could be.

The first album had combined Dub Reggae bass and Can-like Krautrock guitar sensibilities and sounds to create a new music that was more creatively experimental than Punk. As wonderful and ground-breaking as that album was, particularly on stand-out tracks ‘Public Image’ and ‘Annalisa’, it was also a fairly one-dimensional - and short – affair. Almost as if PIL were too awed by what they’d discovered to be able to develop the sound further or laterally beyond that initial creative breakthrough.

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Johnny Rotten, aka John Lydon, is such a colourful, controversial and out-spoken character that it’s not surprising that so much has been written about him. But nine times out of ten what’s written about him completely ignores, or even seems to deny, the fact that, underneath all the media hype and silliness - admittedly often created by Lydon himself - there lays an underrated genuine musical genius. How else can you explain the fact that Lydon was a key character in four - count ‘em - of the most remarkable albums of the past 50 years?

Everyone of course, is aware of ‘Never Mind The Bollocks’ by the Sex Pistols. But what is often over-looked is that after he left the Pistols, he produced with his new band, Public Image Limited (PIL), another three phenomenal and phenomenally influential albums, ‘Public Image’, ‘Metal Box’ and ‘Flowers Of Romance’ between 1978 and 1981.

PIL was quite a different outfit to the Pistols.

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