Legal Weapon
Your Weapon

In early 80s California, you literally couldn't count the hundreds of bands that emerged in the wake of the punk revolution. The Ramones and the Sex Pistols (the ‘77 generation) had inspired whole legions of teenagers to pick up an instrument or a microphone, with the purpose (indeed, the need) to say serious, vital, urgent things in the most effective way possible, in order to convey their feelings to their peers. Los Angeles was at the forefront: an avalanche of bands, concerts, EPs, fanzines, and labels (consider that the legendary Greg Graffin founded the famous Epitaph at 16!) rewrote the history of rock during this time. Tell this to those who believe that punk was born and died in '77 and that new wave was an ephemeral phenomenon, linked to some synth-pop singles or cult dark bands. Among its many incarnations, new wave had a very significant (and today, undeservedly forgotten) form which took root on the west coast at the start of the Reagan era and proved to be closely related to the local hardcore scene, the so-called "beach-punk". These were bands that, essentially, played "old rock'n'roll." But they weren't doing a revival. They actually drew inspiration from the most classic of rock genres, to overturn its Dionysian assumptions and reveal its dark soul. Among these, the most well-known were perhaps Exene Cervenka's X. But what X did in an elegant, clean, sometimes aesthetic way, another band did by veering toward gloomy, dark tones, prioritizing expression over form: they were Legal Weapon, fronted by the beautiful Kat Arthur.
Bitterness, disillusionment, fatalism, pathos, neurosis: this is what stands out from Legal Weapon’s new wave. The essential model for this female “wave’n’roll” remains, of course, Patti Smith’s early albums, a master (thanks to the indispensable contribution of Lenny Kaye) in giving a new raison d'être to music that seemed buried in the classical age of rock (50s/60s). 

“Your Weapon” is the second album by Legal Weapon, released (like their debut “Death of Innocence”) in 1982. Kat Arthur's empathetic voice is here accompanied by a power trio of outstanding musicians, capable of finding the right balance between technical knowledge, performance skills, feeling, and expressiveness. “What a Scene” opens the album with a composition as simple as it is complex, featuring a guitar that alternates between punctuated riffs and rockabilly rosaries (worthy of fellow musician Billy Zoom), classic solos, and variations on the theme, with a rhythm section capable of shifting from frenzied tribalism to sudden stops: above all, however, Arthur’s disillusionment stands out, sporadically supported by faint backing vocals. These vocals take center stage in the masterpiece “The Stare”, with surprisingly Maiden-like flavors (after all, even Iron Maiden was doing new wave in their own way at the time...): a frantic and hopeless run toward an end as certain as it is liberating; a nervous, desolate, sorrowful chant; a consolatory refrain; a drifting guitar which, in the end, launches into a muffled solo fading into Verlaine-like groans... Next up is “What is Wrong with Me”, the most dreamlike track on the album, where a sleepwalking Kat treads softly on bass surges, graceful guitar phrases, and martial drumming: a dream fading sweetly. “Equalizer” is the only oasis of lightheartedness: 3 and a half minutes of gritty rock'n'roll.
 The second side kicks off with the sharpest neurosis: in “Bleeders”, a nerve-wracking tour-de-force of a shredded guitar over a swampy, tortuous, jagged rhythm provides the background for Arthur’s musings, here entirely absorbed in a pensive and introverted mood. A real ordeal. Then it is the turn of “Only Lost for Today” and its multiple tone changes, now disdainful, now serene, now hysterical. The instrumental “Ice Age”, with its funky undertones and circular geometry, confirms the technical prowess of the combo. In the tense, feverish, pulsing, almost unbearable “Hand to Mouth”, it seems as though you are being endlessly chased by an unknown enemy. It is a worthy prelude to the grand finale, “Caught in a Reigh”, perhaps the finest track of the work: a desolate bass line, a saturated, grainy, dissolved guitar, already Mould-like, an elegiac song with country hues, close to the Boss’s epic, hopelessly melancholic, a heaviness that only the most inspired new wave has been able to convey... Like a state of temporary, volatile, fragile tranquility, the kind that flips to depression at the first obstacle, but is also capable of bearing the burden of life, thanks to experience, awareness, and the ability to find a reason to survive the pain of existence: these are the Legal Weapon.