Album Review- Peter Perrett- The Cleansing

I originally wrote this in December of 2024

Like most Americans, I know Peter Perrett from his Only Ones’s hit “Another Girl, Another Planet” a song which may be my favorite and appears on my most streamed songs lists every year (along with Bowie’s Ashes to Ashes and Throwing Muses’s Not Too Soon). Like Wreckless Eric’s “Whole Wide World”, “Another Girl..” is a timeless song, better than the best single of many storied bands; timeless in a way that it still pops up on motion picture soundtracks from time to time. Perrett is one of greatest characters in the James Dean style self- destructive rock mythology. “I always flirt with death…” starts his most famous song while he exudes a sexy shambolic swagger with band following. 

On the third and final album- 1981s Baby’s Got A Gun, he would sing “Why Don’t You Kill Yourself”. Those who may want to mythologize rock n roll excess will point out Johnny Thunders’s 1978 So Alone album which puts Thunders, Perrett, Phil Lynott and Steve Marriott on a cover of “Papa Rolling Stone” (Perrett can also be heard on background vocals on the Thunders classic “You Cant Put Your Arms Around a Memory”). Or how about the fact that Perrett’s girlfriend/Only Ones manager was with Bon Scott on the night he died. Or maybe that Keith Richards was in talks to produce his band in their early days. In the battle with excess, excess often won. 

Perrett popped up briefly in 1996 as a solo artist and then in 2004 with his sons and another erstwhile rock wannabe casualty Pete Doherty in BabyShambles. Perrett would reunite Only Ones for a few appearances in 2007 and 2009 but he largely remained a rock n roll casualty until 2017 How the West Was Won was released that year to much acclaim. I have to admit I wasn’t drawn in by the promotional singles of the time. Humanworld, the follow up appeared in 2019 

 Five years later, the much acclaimed third album The Cleansing has appeared with even more critical success and a knock out single in “I Wanna Go With Dignity” As that song implies, thoughts of death are in the air, but then again they always were. At twenty songs, it feels like a CD size length, and I wonder if most artists wouldn’t have cut 20 minutes, but it’s never a bad listen, and I wonder if I should revisit the other two recent albums. 

Not surprisingly, he occasionally wanders off weird directions- there’s a song called Secret Taliban Wife for example or a Richard Pryor reference on Set the House on Fire. Still. If you find these charming, there’s not too many of this kind of great rock n roll characters still around with Thunders, Stiv Bators, Joe Strummer and Mark E Smith gone. But there’s still a few wisened elder statesmen like Marianne Faithful, Ian Hunter, Graham Parker, and David Johansen around making music and Perrett joins that class here.