CD: Alternative TV - Opposing Forces

Apart from Simon Reynolds paying tribute in Rip It Up And Start Again, his definitive history of post-punk – notably to the demented experimentalism of ATV’s second album Vibing Up The Senile Man – there has been little extended acknowledgement of these definitive Seventies originals. Frontman Mark Perry pops up regularly as a talking head on programmes about punk, but the focus is always, not unreasonably, the year-long run of his famous fanzine Sniffin’ Glue.

As so often, this is not quite as things should be. Always somewhat under the radar, ATV would more rightly be placed alongside the likes of The Fall as a groundbreaking act of the era who kept going.

ATV’s single “Life” and their debut album The Image Has Cracked are among the very best of British punk. The output of their haphazard career, which ticked over sporadically right through the Eighties and Nineties, is almost all worth tracking down. They have, however, now been quiet for a decade-and-a-half, returning with Perry and joined by longterm cohort, guitarist Clive Giblin, who’s been with the band since the mid-Eighties. The good news is that Opposing Forces is up with their best, dipping into a variety of styles, punk rock included, while retaining the kernel of boundary-pushing wilfulness that's Perry’s forte.

The title track, “Hello New York” and “Winterlied” all hark back to the caustic guitars and sneers of their early years – the first of these is particularly riveting. Elsewhere, however, the gamut runs from the gripping, piano-led elegy to lost love, “Dream”; the slow, sinister, minimal seven-and-a-half minute “The Visitor”, all spaced, echoing twangy guitar and unease; and the abstract beatnik dirge-poem “Stars”. Perry’s lyrics remain intriguing, pithy, enigmatic and ripe for quotation throughout, his nasal voice unique, a refreshing change in these homogenous pop times. One of the best songs is “The Tension Between Order and Chaos”, an attack of caustic riffage whose title indicates the areas Perry is mining for inspiration. He remains true to his muse, in other words, giving us an album with many times more bite and ideas than 90% of indie bands a third his age.

Overleaf: Watch the video for the title song of Opposing Forces