JULIAN COPE - Citizen Cain’d

Julian Cope thinks big, but he's no madman. He "lives with the gods", he says, and uses their masks, their voices and their quirks to say something relevant today. He allows himself to release a double album even though 71 minutes of music fit comfortably on a single CD, and on top of that he carefully splits the tracklist so that "side 1" sounds one way and "side 2" sounds another. In deference to the unwritten laws of rock tracklisting, he closes each side with a track running ten-odd minutes (or more).

It starts off calm, with no jolt ("Hell is Wicked"), and then transforms into Iggy: "Can't Hardly Stand It" and "Dying To Meet You" sound like a Pop/Williamson legacy rediscovered who knows where; "Living In The Room…" is "Gimme Danger" with different lyrics (and what lyrics!); "Gimme Head" slows down but closes with Gibson-esque guitar flourishes that not even Angus Young or the aforementioned Williamson could match. Closing the record is "I Will Be Absorbed", slow and blues/southern/mystical, fifteen minutes that amount to the Abc of the ballad applied to Cope's present-day pagan, mystical bent.

Having played all his heavy hitters (and left the listener reeling under a barrage of glam-punk broadsides), Julian takes a step back and opens side 2 with a ten-minute two-chord ballad in the style of Neil Young, "Feels Like A Crying Shame", which, while remaining the least convincing episode on the album, serves as a fitting introduction to the first half of side two, where it's precisely the Young idiom (the "Time Fades Away"-"On The Beach" era) that provides the reference point for our man's vocal and instrumental metamorphosis, packing two more monoliths, "World War Pigs" and "Hopeless Strangers", with sky-high vocal lines and pedal-steel-like guitar work.

Finally, here's the "old" psychedelic, visionary Cope: a preview in "Stomping Dionysus", then his full appearance in "The Living Dead" and "Edge of Death", two tracks almost devoid of a rhythm section, whose tension rests entirely on the dialogue between a voice that sings and declaims and the guitars. Cope thinks big, but he's no madman: he and his band have by now mastered the language of "classic rock", and the simple fact that they can wield it with a freshness and energy far removed from any nostalgia act testifies to the quality of their work.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google

30/04/2026