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This Is What You Want...

This Is What You Get

(Elektra)

by J. Kordosh

1 am surprised.

I am taken aback.

I am, in fact, at a bit of a loss.

Over the years I’ve come to enjoy John Lydon in much the same way I enjoy the Mariner photographs from Mars. Interesting stuff, you know. I’ll admit I never gave the guy a whole lot of thought. I figured he had a great sense of humor and a real flair for promoting himself. Plus,

I got a real kick out of the way he ripped off his record company. I liked some of his music, but we’re talking about an amazingly deep critic here—I like “Eye Of The Tiger” and “Human Nature” and remember artists like Gary Puckett and Bobby Sherman wistfully.

But now I am reformed.

On This Is What You Want, Lydon has established himself as perhaps the premier voodoo noisemaker extant. It isn’t as much an album as it is a bully. With Martin Atkins’s non-stop tom-toms providing an almost tortuous backdrop, Lydon lays down some of the most indecipherable whining anyone’s ever likely to record. It’s scary and it works.