Exploding Myths and Legacies

Neil Jones on The Slits at Cardiff’s Clwb Ifor Bach

9th October, 2009

A selection of zen-styled dreadlocks greet us as we emerge through the Clwb Ifor Bach upstairs doors. The Slits are in town. What to expect? The venue website has sported the cover from their only album featuring them topless to promote the gig. The years have past since then, when sexual provocation went hand in hand with musical devilment. But that’s it, The Slits’ rebellion was never one impelled by notions of glamour and self-absorbment, it was one of starry impulse, insurgence and musical drive, so of course tonight, 30 years later, was always going to be like this…

The Slits have a new shiny-eyed member, Hollie (daughter of one-time Sex Pistols member Paul Cook). She bounces and grinds with an unaffected sensuality to give the band an undeniably vital sheen of youth, but way past that, this is an ageing group that calls on all the reckless glories of the modern underground Pop they helped to create. We feel a light holdback and a bit of self-consciousness at the start, but it’s gradually consumed by their music’s slow shimmer; it’s like watching a campfire light - first the paper, then the twigs, then the wood.

The Slits have that way with a song, simple and life-affirming, so brilliantly musical against the flow of proffessionalism. They live a grander life in the wrong key. The reggae piano and guitar lines bob through so sensual as to make you feel giddy, a chaos is barely concealed under the surface. I wrote to a friend afterwards of how I didn’t realise how “important” a band they were in the context of things, as they “extended the then empty white punk attitude into a genuinely rebellious one that took its cues from black music” , but, really, beyond abstract notions of legacy, they’re still a band that get inside the rebel heart and make it leap.

© 2009 Neil Jones

The Slits’ new Trapped Animal LP is out now on Sweet Nothing Records.

© Miwsig