GC45

Punk and the blues were always more closely connected than most people knew, but few bands made it as explicit as the Gun Club did. Fire of Love might sound a little thin to 21st-century ears, but when it came out in 1981 it was hotly anticipated and tore up the record players of freaks across the country. Ghostly, strange, angry, shot through with warped Delta blues and Lou Reed-style neurosis -- imagine the vertiginous excitement of downing a shot of this darkness for the first time. Back then, Fire of Love was a powerful antidote to everything pop. It still is.

Mix slide guitar with loose talk about sex, death, and, er, Negroes, and pass yourselves off as the Rolling Stones of the nuevo wavo. Wish I could claim absence of merit, but in fact it has its tunelessly hooky allure. No matter how seriously Jeffrey Lee Pierce pretends not to take it, though, I'll take it less seriously than that--and more. (Grade - B)