JOHN COOPER CLARKE
Zip Style Method
Sony/BMG
****

What goes around comes around, and by God if there's one survivor of the punk rock wars who merits a reappraisal then it's Salford's so-called punk-poet, John Cooper Clarke. He's had some lean years, some latter day self-inflicted narcotic injuries, but the man's influence has been acknowledged recently with the Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner citing JCC as a primary reference point. Hence a burst of activity from record companies' re-issue departments and this, one of Cooper Clarke's great lost albums of the early '80s. Tracks such as The Day the World Stood Still, A Heart Disease Called Love, Ninety Degrees in My Shades, The Day My Pad Went Mad and I Wanna Be Yours testify to the man's appeal - a coherent jumble of street-cred poetry backed by ambient post-punk almost-super group The Invisible Girls. Fact: he was fab back then, and he's fab now. www.johncooperclarke.com