TV SMITH
IN THE ARMS OF MY ENEMY
(Boss Tuneage)
Militant folk-punk from the former Ads man.
3/5
An indefatigable graduate of UK punk’s class of ‘77, TV Smith continues to write and perform with the same spirit of poetic social consciousness that informed his work both with The Adverts and TV Smith’s Explorers. The occasionally shambolic punk clatter of the Ads has long since given way to a more acoustic approach and Teev’s latest sees him very much in folk-punk troubador mode. Railing against consumerism, pollution and capitalism’s other more noxious by-products, Smith’s songs still reveal an unabated yearning for social values, most poignantly here with the reflective I Wish I Could See Clearly and the title track, whose spag-west stylings conjure-up Leone-esque visions of do-or-die standoff.
Hugh Gulland
