electricgecko

From the bog they were buried before the end of the 1980s, The Cramps’ decaying bodies surface into 2025’s hailstruck winter. Bare-chested and in tight leather jeans they are stomping forward with a mindless minimalism otherwise only found in ichigenkin songs. This music presents the highest state of post-self existence to the contemporary listener: A worm-eaten bog wraith Nirvana that seems inconceivable viewed from the high-gloss ruins of today’s cultural landscape. It is a sound schooled in the garages of Detroit and CBGB’s toilet stalls, keeping one restless eye on the horrors of the creole south, only to be hung out to dry-ferment into a fully realized form during L.A.’s 1980s punk scene. All Tore Up has been among my favourite songs and records for 20 years. This music refuses to let its intelligence get in the way of becoming the most abrasive and direct version of itself – a remarkable quality in all of popular culture¹, let alone in rock music. The Cramps cannot be killed, they have been undead for a long time, here to haunt whatever needs haunting.

• The Cramps – All Tore Up, LP, Revisited Records, 1989

1. Prevalent, if at all, in forms close to pop’s folk culture origins: delta blues, spirituals, drone metal ↩