Album: Luke Haines <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Off My Rocker at the Art School Bop, DEGENERATE MUSIC

Luke Haines has always provided a suitably astringent corrective to whatever received opinions dominate the cultural landscape, and on Off My Rocker at the Art School Bop, pot shots are taken at everything from macho working-class culture to both the sleazier, predatory side of pop cultureand the notion of a more honourable pop pantheon of "Crosby Stills and Nash/The legacy of The Clash". His primary target is the Little Englander mentality derided in "All the English Devils" and "Here's to Old England", and this is where he comes a bit unstuck, as his fascination with the iconography of Blitz and Wembley 1966, and folk-devils like Enoch Powell, Great Train Robbers, Kray Twins and Freddie Mills, surpasses that of any comparable contemporary commentator. Not only that, but the cheesy Eighties electropop style on which he largely relies here is now just as accepted a part of the pop pantheon as those upon which he pours such scorn. An entertaining series of blasts, nonetheless.

DOWNLOAD THIS: 'The Heritage Rock Revolution', 'Bad Reputation', 'All the English Devils'