Public Image Limited
Second Edition

As happens with wine, music is also subject to cycles of highs and lows (in its case, creative). Occasionally, there are extraordinary years that set the cornerstones of rock history, defining decades, inventing genres, perfecting the attempts sketched in previous years, and influencing developments in the years to come.
Midas-like years when it seems there is a wonderful inspiring fluid in the air: just capture it or breathe it in, and each artist can find their own keystone.
For example, I believe that among others, 1967, 1991, or 1979 were such years. In that year, at least 1/5 of my favorite albums were released: Unknown Pleasures/Joy Division, Three Imaginary Boys/Cure, London Calling/Clash, Highway To Hell/AC/DC, Y/Pop Group, Entertainment!/Gang Of Four, Off The Wall-/M. Jackson, 154/Wire, L’Era del Cinghiale Bianco/Battiato, Drums And Wires/XTC and others, others, others... among these, there's certainly the second album by Public Image Limited, the band formed by John Lydon, ex-Johnny Rotten & former frontman of the Sex Pistols.

After the dramatic breakup of the group, which had been one of the founders of punk, the entire musical world of the time was left agape, curious to see what would become of our John. The alternatives were A) destroy himself with drugs and die like a misunderstood bum, indifferent to the world (see Sid Vicious) B) continue on the punk track, trying to keep it alive at all costs as a life creed, until the inevitable withering (see Ramones) C) bring the quest for new musical solutions to a new, further level, consistent with his nonetheless glorified past as a punk innovator. And it was this path that he embarked on, assembling a group of high-class rejects from other great bands of the period (notably the guitarist, ex-Clash Keith Levine).
It all began in 1978 with the debut First Edition, an ideal point of communication/contrast between the nihilistic urgency of punk and a more diluted and fluid approach, a kind of hypnotic and noise-laden dub with flashes of robotic danceability that really reeks of novelty, indeed of (what would become) new wave. But the tension between these two currents was perfectly resolved the following year with Second Edition (initially sold in a metal box -very cool- and thus called Metal Box). The sublimation of the strange cross makes us see the journey from Never Mind The Bollocks up to here as obvious and coherent: Lydon is as angry as ever in his existential anguish, but instead of provocation and arrogance, he now prefers style, sophistication, and depth.
The depth is revealed in the lyrics as in the sound, characterized by an enveloping cavernous bass line (“A Forest” by the Cure would be a legitimate child of this style) and a very sharp drum (if it can be understood, a cross between that of the Police and Barry White's) but with tribal flashes ala Adam & The Ants. The guitar sways turbulently, creating fencing duels between the various distortions that (listen to it if you can with headphones) come from the right, the left, everywhere. And above all this, there's the leader's stinging voice, tormented yet clear in scratching and tormenting every sound, every feeling that comes near.

If the Sex Pistols wanted to complain by destroying, P.I.L. complain by reflecting, experimenting, and dancing in the dark.