TERRY HALL
LAUGH
DEMON
★★★★
The Specials, Fun Boy Three, The Colourfield, Terry, Blair & Anouchka, Vegas (with Dave Stewart)… throughout his career, Terry Hall has collected bands the way that kids nowadays collect Pokémon cards.
He has excited less attention and enjoyed less commercial success with his solo career, yet this is a state of affairs that should ideally be rectified. This first-time-on-(clear)-vinyl reissue of his 1997 second solo Buzzcocks’simplicity was their genius that became their straitjacket. By their third album, 1979’s A Different Kind Of Tension, Pete Shelley was chafing against the restrictions of the punk-pop formula so easily mimicked by Jilted John.