That rock’n’roll is the musical vehicle for disaffection, frustration and sociological ambivalence is one of the genre’s many conceits. In its original guise, rock’n’roll claimed synonymy with the discourse of anti-establishment attitude; 20 years later, and Richard Hell recalibrated punk rock rebellion into slacker form. We’re so pissed off with the world, we couldn’t even get a fuck. When Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys proclaim they’re ready for boredom, the paradox is deliberate. Ready For Boredom is the record you need when you wake up and can’t see the woods of your future for the towering trees of financial insecurity and personal despair. When the careers counsellor asks you where you want to be in ten years time, and you answer with another girl, on another planet; when your parents chide you for your peers, and you assert your membership of the blank generation; when your partner pleads to kindle the excitement of the past, and you proclaim that you can’t throw your arms around a memory. Everything is too much; nothing is meaningful.
The album opens with Devotion, and you can hear the cobwebs being blown off the dusty bodies from the previous night’s debauchery, the soundtrack a forced marriage of the powerpop hope of The Nerves and punk attitude of The Germs. On Bite My Tongue the early afternoon blues have set in; the hair of the dog is loitering around the corner to whet the appetite for more denial. Only Loneliness is the best song Pete Perritt lost in the fog of his chemically brutalised adolescence, Call is emotional desolation soaks in the sludge of post-hardcore, while Have You Ever takes The Buzzcocks’ plaintive expression of Mancunian punk rock love and soaks it in the grime of 21st century realism.
The album flips over – after all, this is a record that’s born to be pressed on black plastic – and there’s a sense of Stemsian hope flowing through the veins of Any Day Now; maybe things are getting better, or maybe it’s just another hungover illusion. On Sally the spirit of dirty ’70s rock shines through, Ted Nugent witnessed through a Casanovas lens with a dusty Peter Criss hanging out in the studio. Wait And See is contemplative and disconcerting – is the calm before profane storm? The title track is a simultaneously a statement of intent and resignation: these guys have had enough, imbibed the rhetorical bullshit, bought the t-shirt, done the self-help course with the slick American dude, watched the 3am infomercial, handed over the hard-earned cash and still nothing’s changed. Ready? Yep, ready for the same old shit. From there it’s a calm walk out the door in Keep It From You, a bit of Billy Bragg Thatcherist realism, a touch of Pistols nihilism, a hint of Scott and Charlene’s Wedding weathered brown couch beauty.
And that’s it. No fanfare, no drum solo, no self-indulgent guitar heroics or pretentious poetic flourish. Just a bunch of guys ready for boredom. Boredom never sounded so good.
BY PATRICK EMERY
Best Track: Devotion
If You Like These, You’ll Like This: ONLE ONES, JOHNNY THUNDERS, TWERPS, LOWER PLENTY
In A Word: Slackarse
