Fulham Fallout

The U.K. punk explosion left scrap heaps piled high with talentless never-wases and pro-forma trend-jumpers. But West London’s Lurkers avoided those heaps, if only because their music held a kind of screw-all charm that defined boredom like no other punk band on the planet, then or now. If singer Howard Wall’s pitched monotone aped Pete Stride’s simple power-chord riffs, if the songs sounded like blokes quaking it down at the pub—that was the point. The Lurkers were blessed with an inattentive kind of explosiveness, if that makes any sense, and their indifference wasn’t a pose. It’s what made the band irresistibly great, a frolicsome mix of The Faces (the haircuts and hangover humor), The Ramones (the deceptively smart simplicity), and lethargy. Hence, Fulham Fallout is littered with elbow-bending loafer anthems, with “Ain’t Got a Clue,” “Jenny,” ‘I’m on Heat,” and “I Don’t Need to Tell Her” among them, punk classics all. Even Henry Rollins placed this album in his all-time Top 10 list of greatest punk albums; that should count for something.