Blurt: Poppycock (review in NME 5th april 1986)

Ted Milton’s Blurt sound clearer and sharper than ever before and “Poppycock” is likely to emerge as one of the year’s best “rock” records.

Blurt have always been reduced to the post-punk indie category even though their habitually stark sax/guitar/drums sound is more like a disembowelment than a celebration of rock.

Five years ago, inbetween his ferocious sax honking, the manic Milton scream that “My Mother Was A Friend Of An Enemy Of The People” epitomized the burgeoning Blurt sound with their name being an accurate reflection of their spitting, blabbering noise.

On this new LP, Blurt are harder and tighter with the spiraling eruptions of sound moving ever closer to a realization of Milton’s “paranoid blues” vision.

On “Domain Of Dreams”, a deeply-layered moaning wail of a song, intensity is matched by control and Milton’s playing is supplemented especially effectively by the drums and guitar.

 

During this same song, the gruff gravel which is Ted Milton’s voice wraps itself around a bastardized French lyric – this crushes the doubt that Blurt are committed totally to the eccentric chanting of wacky phrase like “poppycock” and “the butter is gone”.

“Down In The Argentine”, “Man To Fly” and “The Flags” overflow with this energy and authority always promised, but never really delivered, by less successful “rock experimentalists” like Clock DVA.

The Blurt sound is now too seering to be lumbered with such categorization. All that really needs to be said is that “Poppycock” is both deadly serious and absurdly entertaining – a great record.

Donald McRae







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