The third and final Pink Fairies studio album, Kings of Oblivion, welcomed
guitarist Larry Wallis to the brew, bringing with him some of the band's
most remarkable -- and concise -- material yet. The opening "City
Kids," famously recut by Motörhead during Wallis' sojourn with
that band, is as dynamic an opener as the Pink Fairies ever had, while
the album's two epics, "I Wish I Was a Girl" and "Street
Urchin," similarly catch the band as they made a sharp turn away
from the rockin' riff jam basics that scarred their second LP, What a
Bunch of Sweeties, and moved instead into the affirmative guttercat stance
that so effectively predicted the rudiments of punk rock. Indeed, if any
album could be said to have been born ahead of its time, Kings of Oblivion,
conceived in 1973 but sounding just like 1977, is it. In common with the
rest of the remastered Pink Fairies albums, Kings of Oblivion divides
its bonus tracks between unfamiliar versions of familiar material (most
pressingly, an urgent alternate mix of "City Kids") and non-album
material. This includes two versions of the loping "Well Well Well"
and the country rock-ish "Hold On" dating from 1972, and a single
cut with Wallis' short-lived predecessor, Mick Wayne, and it's gratifying
to have them on CD at last. Truly, though, Kings of Oblivion could exist
just as happily without the extras; greeted at the time as the Pink Fairies'
best album, it remains a tightly coiled, furiously adrenalined beast,
the summation of everything that the Pink Fairies promised and all that
subsequent reunions have continued to deliver.
(by Dave Thompson, AMG)
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