AWmusic

Ranking or even speaking on all the forgotten acts of punk and indie would take a thousand monkeys a thousand years. There have simply been too many bands who from the last 1970s onward have treated music as an alternative to entertainment, ascribed to it some rarified notion of art or subscribed to a more ascetic ethos, who were ultimately besotted by their difference and fell through the cracks. We know were it not for Kurt Cobain such an extraordinary group as The Vaselines may have been lost to many fans, or The Raincoats might have been left in their by-gone era, never to record a Peel Session or encounter the miracle of having all their albums reissued. It takes fame to make fame sometimes, and a lot of bands aren’t so lucky.

While a friend advised me The Wipers had received their due credit in critical circles over the years as one of the earliest purveyors of punk, to lay-people like ourselves they need an introduction. The literature spotlights guitarist Greg Sage, who began the band in 1977 as a 10-year recording project with no plans to tour. Their first album, Is This Real?, was released under Sage’s Trap Records. In 1980, with the release of the above-titled LP, the band was colossal youth.

Punk was the era of short singles. One thinks of the slew of Buzzcocks releases, for example, many of which were under three minutes long. And certainly this album has its share: “Taking Too Long” and “Pushing The Extreme” are 3:07 and 3:13 respectively. The title track “Youth of America,” however, tops off at a massive 10:27, ostensibly contrary to the historic aims of punk music: were they not in part to resist drawn-out, ornate indulgences of prog rock, with violent brevity? But the song is an art rock masterpiece, with agitated melodic guitar lines, noisier sections reminiscent sometimes of Sonic Youth, with schizophrenic arrangement of voices, some singing, others screaming, still others whispering or mumbling. There is a raw energy to the tracks, sometimes of rage, on other occasions an unidentifiable melancholic yearning. Each of the six songs is a gem.

Youth of America
Taking Too Long
Pushing The Extreme

Tags: album