Jeffrey Lee Pierce's all-too straggly career represents one of rock's great lost legacies. His LA combo The Gun Club made spine-chilling albums in the early 1980s that breathed fire all over ancient blues and injected a thrilling punk energy that was both clinically NOW and eerily timeless. Listen to their first two albums "The Fire Of Love" and its' malevolent sister/ follow-up "Miami" (scandalously long-deleted) and you will never ever need the likes of The White Stripes and The Soledad Brothers again.
Sadly, Jeffrey shuffled off this mortal coil in the late 1990s (surprisingly of a brain haemorrhage not the tried and tested route in the end), but to those of us in the know, he still casts a long shadow. Ask Mark Lanegan: the Pierce co-write "Kimiko's Dream House" was a stand out from the ex-Screaming Trees' frontman's brilliant "Field Songs".
And don't forget to ask Andy Weatherall, another diamond geezer who understands these things like he understands the need to breathe. To even think of covering "Sex Beat" (from "The Fire Of Love") takes some bollocks, but to give it a snappy, brooding and malevolent update like this one is some going. Jeffrey's murderous sexual intent translates brilliantly here, as TLS inject the song with the kind of claustrophobic darkness Death In Vegas invested in "The Contino Sessions" and the end results are entirely compelling.
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Also included is a deathly, spaced-out remix which brings the vocal to the forefront and a motorik instrumental mix which refits the song's body with an unlikely, but magnificent Krautrock heart that's both chilling and thrilling. Even if you usually spurn dance/ electronica, this one seamlessly pushes such stupid prejudice aside. Listen and learn, kids. This is how it's done.
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